On Thursday morning, March 12th, I visited my mom before going to the office. When I arrived, I brought her some gifts. They were going-away gifts. I was going away. Not by choice; that’s for sure. This was the 75th day in a row I visited my mom. I really thought we’d be reunited in three weeks, maybe a month. No one could have imagined how long we’d be separated. 

She got right up to give me a hug, and I presented the gifts to her one at a time, a cup of coffee, a chocolate chip cookie, an Amy for America sticker, and a new stuffed dog. She put the new dog on her lap immediately. They were instant friends. 

“Hey Nurse Amy, did you get a new dog,” a staff member asked. “What’s his name? He looks smaller than Ribbie. Maybe you can call him Short Rib.” The staff member and I laughed. My mom joined us, more to go along than because she understood the joke. 

Giving her “Short Rib” was important. When I left her, Ribbie and Short Rib became my mom’s best friends and her most loyal companions. These stuffed animals were her only physical connection to her life outside of the Wesley. Instead of me, she’d take a walk with them each day. She’d visit and talk with them, not me.

Alzheimer’s had stolen so much from my mom. COVID-19 and the forced and prolonged isolation of seniors in New York’s nursing homes took so much more. This was the cruelest part of this virus: this was a time when my mom needed family contact the most and we couldn’t be with her.

I didn’t want to scare her, so I made the decision not to talk about the pandemic, or that my visits were about to stop. I had to appear to be myself, happy and hopeful. To be resilient in the face of this threat, I needed to focus on what I could do, not what was out of my control. The best I could do was to give her a new dog, a cup of coffee and a chocolate chip cookie. She loved all three, and I did it all with a smile. 

When it was time for me to leave, she walked with me to the elevator. I wanted to take her with me. Leaving her today was so much harder than on her first day. “Todd, I’m not ready for this,” she said then. Today, I wanted to say, “Mom, I’m not ready for this.” Now it was me pleading silently to myself for her to come home with me. 

But I knew she was in the safest place possible. My job would take me out into the community as soon as I left and every day thereafter. This is where the virus spread, and I couldn’t go into lockdown with her. So I smiled like I did every day and gave her a hug. The hug might have been just a little longer than usual. If it was, she didn’t notice. 

“I have to go to work but I will see you soon,” I said. That is what I was trained to say at the end of every visit. This way, she’d know that I would return. Then, I got into the elevator. It always took a little time for the doors to close. I think they programmed this delay in case a resident tried to leave. 

I looked out at my mom, and she watched me as I just stood there. The doors didn’t move, so I put my hands up to my face with my thumbs against my cheeks and my fingers outstretched. I waved my fingers and stuck out my tongue like you might do to get a small child to laugh. I can still see her standing there. She looked back at me, and smiled without a care in the world. She held Short Rib tight as the elevator doors closed.

I would not see her in person again for 363 days.