Card sharks

He asked her if she was a good card player. She said she believes she is. He said next time he is going to bring a deck of cards.

My mom and her partner Shabazz went to visit my grandma tonight, for the final time in the rehab center. Tomorrow she will be moved to a nursing home, a place I swore I would never put her in. I feel so much that I have failed her.

She will never return to her apartment. Not that she really liked it very much, which she made clear to me on many occasions, but still, it was hers. It allowed her to retain some independence.  Even after we had her sell her car, she still had her own place.

I close my eyes for a few moments to remember the way she once was, the woman who bathed me and fed me and scolded me and loved me. The woman who taught me to play cards. We would spend hour after hour sitting at the kitchen table play gin rummy. Bowls of snacks and cold drinks and lots of conversation. She always shuffled the deck, because she was so very good at it and I was not. I'm still not. She'd present the deck for me to cut and I would knock on top, indicating to her I trusted her and didn't need to cut the deck. At least that's what it always meant to me.

It's amazing to me that these times will not happen again. Its all in the past.