The time spent fretting could’ve been put to better use. When I arrived at the facility, more a resort than a nursing home, the receptionist asked for my name. Moments later, Christa McCall was ushered down the hall to my mom’s apartment. There was no sense in giving my legal name: Explanations would have wasted time and benefitted no one when you had to present ID during check-in.
Somehow, I expected Mom to look exactly the way I’d last seen her at the wedding. Beaming with pride, short brown hair artfully arranged into a more stylish helmet than usual, hazel eyes twinkling. The woman who greeted me barely resembled the mother I remembered.
She sat hunched in her chair, peering at some kind of needlework. Not a single brown hair remained on her head. She seemed smaller, somehow, as if t
