“Have you come to take me home?” my mother asks, in a high and thin voice. My chest, like a balloon, inflates with guilt. It’s Saturday. Every other Saturday I make the two-hour trip and arrive in time for lunch, nursing-home starches, heavy but tasty – yummy yeast rolls and banana pudding, one of the perks of a small-town facility where somebody’s grandmother is the cook. “Not yet. It’s almost time for lunch, and today we’re having fried chicken.” I hear the false note in my too-bright voice. But she lights up. Fried chicken is her favorite meal. Nothing to compare with hers, when she cooked for her family, but good enough. I push her wheelchair toward the dining room and settle her in a line of other residents in wheelchairs, waiting for lunch. Waiting, just waiting. Lots of waiting here. The nurses say she asks the same question again and again. To the doctors listening to her tired heart. The preacher who comes to pray over her. Anyone who visits. An
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