Our cars arrived throughout the day, nudging into spaces around the pale, pink, multistoried building. We daughters (it's almost always daughters) hurried toward this last place of independence for our mothers, carrying plastic sacks and plants and quiet canvas bags filled with amenities. These were the gifts of self and love to make our mothers' final months or years a little nicer-a little better than mere routine. Sometimes, using the yardsticks of our own lives, we forgot that comfort and pleasure for the elderly often come from predictable events and familiar places. These are anchors that delay the onset of confusion when it begins to produce those frightening moments[horizontal ellipsis]the lapses[horizontal ellipsis]the broken fragments of memory.

As one of those daughters, I knew the look in the others' eyes as we paced the familiar hallways, like sentries, passing with brief smiles of recognition. We belonged to a sorority of hopefuls. We wished for more healthy time to share with our mothers, dreading the phone calls that might announce another illness or fall. We tried to manage each stomach-clenching crisis with brightness and optimism. We resisted noticing the signs that our mothers were winding down: the slower steps, the letting go of tasks they once could do. I worried about the stubbornness my mother showed when well-meaning visiting nurses came to instruct her in how to avoid falls and how to do hand/eye exercises to improve visual focus. It was difficult for a 91-year-old woman to take the lessons seriously; she was too set in her ways.

Now my visits are over, not just to see Mom in her apartment or take her on an outing, but also the scary emergency room trips and the tedious hospital stays where I was a monitor of the caregiving for this person I knew so well. The nurses were so busy[horizontal ellipsis]and how could they know when Mom told a perfectly reasonable story that I knew was wrong and wasn't normal for her? I tried my best to soften the end of the circle that began with my arrival in her life and concluded with her departure from mine.

Of course, our shared lives haven't ended, either spiritually or physically. I visit her silent apartment with an inward apology for invading her privacy. The remaining bits of her life are exposed to me, and I feel guilty for the intrusion. As I sort and choose what to keep, I encounter possessions I never saw before or can't remember. "What value did these things have for you?" I wonder. "Why did you keep this? Was there something special about these letters that only you could know?" That's the worst of it: no longer being able to ask.

As I retreat through the corridors and see the other daughters who still march to the drumming of their mothers' lives, I know I have left the membership of a legion of women who treasure and fear those final days. Because my husband and I have no children, it crosses my mind to wonder[horizontal ellipsis]will there be someone to walk for me?