I discovered something so simple and amazing today.

It was calming for me and I project for my mother too.

I call it “the side by side.”

I realized that when I am beside my mother it is so much better than being in front of her.

Many songs are written about “when you’re by my side, I want you by my side, with you by my side I can do anything or be anything.”

Maybe there is something to it, rather than just some corny romantic lyrics.

We enjoy someone by our side; we walk and talk with someone by our side, we lay in bed with someone by our side if we have a partner or kids or dogs and cats.

Well, the truth is that my mother is comforted with me by her side not in front of her not talking at her not looking into her eyes trying to find that spark of the woman she was.

She relaxes with me by her side.

We are on the back porch.

She has her feet up on the ottoman sitting in a rocking chair.

I am next to her at the table on my computer.

We sit like this for hours; her watching the birds, the insects on the screens, the wind blowing the leaves on the trees and the brilliant green of the plants and grass.

I’m lost in writing.

She looks over every once in a while and excitedly questions me:

“Are you a writer? Have you really written a book? When will I see it?

“Yes mom, I have written a book, and you are in the book, you’ll see it soon.”

Pleased, she goes back to rocking.

I go back to typing.

The afternoon is spent with her looking and questioning and me answering and typing.

Later, we go out to dinner and I sit across from her.

She stares at me for a long time.

She looks upset and then she says,

“why do you let your bangs grow so long, you look awful. You need to cut those bangs, what is the matter with you?”

My mother was always in charge of my bangs growing up. She would grab the scissors and cut my bangs so unevenly that I always ended up crying and coming up with any excuse to not go to school the next day.

In this moment, at the restaurant, she is back in my childhood as the mother demanding her daughter’s bangs get cut.

I laugh and tell her we will get the sizzors later when I take her home and then she can cut my bangs.

Satisfied, she goes back to drinking her ice tea, mumbling about how bad I look.

She will not remember the bangs or the sizzors by the time we go home, so I’m not worried about my hair, but I am curious.

After such a wonderful afternoon together, just happy being together side by side out on the porch why did she all of a sudden notice my bangs and get so upset?

So, I ask her, not really knowing if I will get any kind of an answer.

What she told me was so profound and so simple.

She said:

“I didn’t say anything because you weren’t sitting right in front of me.”

What??

That’s it, if you don’t see it, it doesn’t exist?

Is that how her mind works now?

She did recently tell me that she has an automatic mind that lets things that are unpleasant disappear.

This is so interesting!

I’ve given her my arm to hold as she moves more deeply into this disease and now I know that being there, by her side, is the best place to be

for both of us.