In the back of my file drawer I found a pair of socks
left there from the time my mother came to stay
when the music room was her bedroom
and all her belongings took up two drawers
after a stroke my mother remained her sunny self
and though she could no longer find words
she charmed the staff in rehab, shamelessly
created her own clucking, gibberish language
never returned home or drove again
she could not write her name or dress herself
suffered bottomless loss and still she laughed
until the hallucinations
a second stroke, ending in a bad fall, caused them
when she came back to earth she was stuck in a wheelchair
back in her one room looking around furtively
at the books shelved to the ceiling
she studied the walls without recognition
and her eyes filled with fear
so much fear she packed her things
in four brown paper bags
pulled her comforter and pillow from the bed
and dragged all of it to the front door to wait
for a different daughter to rescue her
and after she left she cried for two days straight
and my sister took her to a nursing home
later we figured out my mother’s terror
was the prednisone prescribed for the
mysterious swelling in her right hand
it scrambled something in her brain
something she needed to keep her bearings
and though we stopped the medication, my mother
remained wherever it left her
for a time she was content, back in her borrowed
bedroom of beloved books she could no longer read
to hell with socks! she would say with a kick
as I eased them onto her freezing-cold feet
so happy to lie cozy under her comforter
sleep her only ticket to another chance at joy
to wake to the sound of her grandson running
to jump into her bed and snuggle in with a handful
of the dozens of dinosaurs she had given him
in her last hours my mother didn’t loosen
her grasp of whatever was left for her
moving her lips along with the music therapist
singing five foot two, eyes of blue
to the strum of a ukulele
she held her own as long as she could
until the morphine erased the pain
and everything else with it
then she closed her eyes and without a sound
launched herself into eternity and
left us with a songbook, her life
of courage, kicks, smiles, and socks