THE BEAUTIFUL WOMAN SHE WAS

“Is my bald spot showing?”

…was the routine question in the mornings before work and school.

“Let me fix it,” I’d say, and comb through a layer of curls with a purple pick, then spray my mom’s hair with a noxious cloud of White Rain as she stared in the bathroom mirror.

I’d watch her line her eyelids a smoky brown and dust on some Cover Girl powder.

In her younger years, she looked really pulled together.  She had this turtleneck dress the color of French Vanilla ice cream, with an attached paisley sash that draped across her shoulder to her waist, which was cinched with a leather belt.  She wore high-heeled pumps that matched her belt, and gold jewelry.  

I always thought my mom was beautiful.

She cared about how she looked–which was why it was hard for me when she got older.  She went through a phase of wearing thin cotton shorts and tanks in her forties–she’d kind of given up on style, I think.  Part of it had to do with the leg brace she had to wear, which required wide shoes.  The only shoes that seemed to fit the brace were tennis shoes, so it was tennis shoes every day–and the rest of the outfit had to work around them.

But it was the last decade of her life that was the hardest.  After this one surgery my mom had in 2015, she was never the same.  I knew it because her handwriting changed, and she started forgetting things and saying things that didn’t make sense.  She even undermined me by telling hurtful stories about me to the family, which I learned about through my aunts.

She would have done anything for me, and did do everything for me, so I think this is how I knew her mind was going before most other people did.

I couldn’t bear to do the caregiving all of the other women were willing to do for her.  They showered her, rolled her around, changed her…but for some reason, I could only bring myself to help if there was no one else to assist.

I just wanted my mom to be my mom. I didn’t want her to be my patient.

But when her nails became dirty, I decided that was something I could handle. I don’t know why.  I just know the woman standing in front of the bathroom mirror in a French Vanilla-colored turtleneck dress would not let her nails get so dirty.

She had the whitest, healthiest nails of anyone I knew and wore them long her whole life.

So every time I came home, I made it my mission to paint her nails.  I cleaned them, filed them, and painted them with Essie nail polish.  It had to be Essie, because the other brands would chip off before the next time I came home.

Then, when she stopped being able to wash her own face, her skin became rough and dry.  I just remembered the woman who wouldn’t be caught dead without her Cover Girl powder in her purse, and I felt compelled to clean and moisturize her face.

She liked the Burt’s Bee’s facial wipes made with rosewater.

Once her face was clean, I moisturized it with vanilla body butter.  The butter was thick and cleared up her dry patches, and Gram said mom liked the scent, so I kept buying bottles for her.  Ordering face wipes and body butter on Amazon was a specific task I could immediately control, and there was so much about this I could not control.

When we were done with her facial, I’d fix her hair.  There wasn’t much hair left, and what was there could only be combed straight back.  Combing it reminded me of those mornings with the purple pick in front of the bathroom mirror, when she trusted me to help her look good. 

On the day of her wake, her sisters, my grandma and I were brought in to see her first.  Her makeup looked beautiful but her hair was just not right.  I could not let her hair be wrong on the last day people would ever see her, and I knew she’d want me to fix it like I had when I was a little girl. The funeral director handed me a comb and a spray bottle and I combed her hair straight back, over and over, until it was perfect.

I knew she would be proud of the way she looked on her last day, with her makeup done right, her nails painted and her hair in place.

I could not control that I lost my mom.  But I could remind people of the beautiful woman she was.