Lately, I find myself weeping in my bed when the night sky is at its blackest and my husband Geoff is dead asleep on his side, his silhouette a distant mountain range. I press my face into my damp pillow to mute the occasional, plaintive chirp. I’ve never been much of a crier, so these late-night keening sessions make no sense. I’m a fifty-nine-year-old happily-married woman, my children are healthy and grown, yet when the lights go out and the world lies down, a single phrase repeats itself in my mind: I want my mom. 

My mother isn’t missing or gone. She lives a short twenty-minute drive away in an assisted living facility. When I visit, she looks like herself, shorter than I, hair dyed brown and styled in pert curls, and a smile people say looks like mine. When she speaks, her word choices, her intonations, the way she moves her hands are all her, but if you sit with her for more than a few minutes, you learn she’s less like herself and more like a carnival hologram, repeating a limited, looping set of thoughts and comments:

“I have nine windows in my apartment.” 

“My cat is the best roommate I’ve ever had.”

“Did I tell you your husband reminds me of my dad?”