We brought my mom home from the nursing and rehabilitation facility a week ago, having set up my son’s room with a safe corridor of accessibility, a path from a bed and chair to the bathroom, a path that includes a Keurig coffee maker, a television, a computer, several pictures, a large date and time display, drawers with clothes, and a gate to keep the dogs out from underfoot, a place where they can gather and get plenty of pets, as they feel inclined. 

Mom is getting around well though the chair is a bit low and with her right arm elbow fracture she can only use her left arm to lift herself, and that takes pre-positioning, scooting to the very edge of the chair and putting her nose over her toes as therapy says, trusting that motion not to send her too far forward and into another fall. 

Our house was certainly not designed for access, with twelve stairs that must be ascended or descended to enter or leave. Once on our main floor though it’s mostly accessible, save some transitions that might cause a trip and the three dogs that bless their hearts just want to be part of any action in the house. 

Next week Mom will be moving into a personal care facility, an affordable retirement community twenty minutes from our house, a place that offers the level of care that my mom needs now. It is the perfect facility because of one simple fact: 

Mom will be able to keep her cat Zach.

The therapeutic value of animals is well documented and for anyone who shares their world with one a truth that goes without question. Cats and dogs can be expensive to keep, but their worth transcends such costs.

Mom has not lived with Zach for over four weeks now, not since early last month. I go over to her cottage where he continues to live twice a day, making sure to not just feed him but to sit with him and pet him and scratch between his ears and use the fishing pole with a feather attached to tempt him to be a kid again, which he does, lying on his back just looking at the bouncing fluff for a few moments until he snatches it from the air, pulling it in to his chest, rolling with it, his twelve-year old body livelier than you would expect.

We also watch Family Feud with Steve Harvey. I can tell that he loves it, although really it’s me of course. I love sitting there with him and scratching his head and watching the contestants give silly and risqué answers that elicit antics from Steve Harvey. Sometimes I realize that I’m smiling as we sit there and sometimes I find myself actually laughing out loud. 

I can’t explain this joy, sitting with Zach and laughing. My life has complication and weight, as all of our lives, and somehow the question, “We asked one hundred married women, ‘Name something you love more than your husband,’” cuts through mental fences, and when the two families do not reveal all of the answers, I’ll sit on the edge of my seat, nose over my tose, anxious to know those responses, smiling and nodding as I hear the “ding” and the answer “my cat/dog” flips over and the audience says the answer out loud, almost in unison, and I realize I’ve said the answer out loud as well, Zach on my lap now digging his claws into my arm.