Mother Wraps Herself in Silence

Sometime before I was not mature enough to notice, she began to dissolve. Husband dead, son revolving around one woman after another, moving away from her fading presence. Aware only of the ebb, and flow of her care or interest, Distance surfacing in her eyes. How her housecoat insulated her from what she once loved. When she looked at me it was through a tunnel she had dug into her mind, her presence muffled as if it were now always too cold to surface. I should have seen the signs, but by then I only visited during narrow gaps in my life. I told her to join something, do what other old people did. Only now do I understand what old people do, - they think of their parents in threads and patchwork pieces. I cannot recall the exact period when the seam of strong bonds began to unravel, for of course, that specific time was buried with her.