July 16, 2026
Today I realised that there is a jarring resemblance between my mom’s last knitting project before she passed, and the disease the doctors said was slowly but surely demolishing her cognitive abilities. As I am photographing the knitwear I see beyond the balls of yarn, the knitting pens and the unfinished second sock. I see with the eye of an artist. And the eye of a grieving daughter. And tears start running down my cheeks. Finally. I have been so calm through this coming home journey. And now knitwear is breaking me open.
I was not so composed right before I left Canada, almost 3 weeks ago. I did not want to go. I begged God to let me be like the main character of that old TV-show ‘I dream of Jeannie’. Simply cross my arms and blink my eyes twice and it would all be over. My mom would be healthy and alive and I would spends lots of quality time with her in a little vacation home I rented this summer for just that purpose. This was not to be. My mom is gone. What’s left of her sits in a cremation urn on a little table in that same vacation home right here, lit by a candle. A portrait I made of her a while ago hangs above it, reminding me of her face in better days.
I look at the perfect extra ball of red yarn, that I find in the knitwear bag. It mocks me by ressembling a smiling face. The comparison with a healthy brain forces itself upon me. My mom as I have known her all of my almost 66 years. A happy little ray of sunshine with an iron will and courageous like hell. And the sharpest brain.
Next to the ball orfyarn lies a completed red sock. Perfectly knitted. It fills me with joy and gratitude. Because I was the one who suggested she pick up knitting again as a way to fight boredom. Others thought it would be ‘way too complex in her state’, but I disagreed. I hoped it would stimulate the brain to stay active AND give her something to do during her more and more empty days. There was a beautiful pull-over that I had found tucked away in a corner, with a neckline that had come apart. It turned out to be a good place to start. I asked her if she still knew the stitches and saw her perk up: “Of course, you never forget that!”. And she went to work.
The first result made us all giggle, because the new neckline was way too narrow! But she was not discouraged. She frogged all of the work and started over. The second result was perfect. And she started wearing the pull-over again and to my utter joy kept on knitting! And produced quite a few good socks.
The finished last sock has a thread still hanging from it. It seems to point to the next part of this final project: 3/4 of the second sock completed on a (to me) complicated quartet of thin knitting pens. I could never do it. I always found knitting very hard and have tremendous admiration for those who master it. Like my mom. Her last stitch is still on one of the four pens. And when I follow the thread hanging from it, it leads to a completely tangled yarn barf, as insiders call it. It pains me to look at it now that my eyes see it as the confusion that was growing in her brain. How befitting. And how painful.
We don’t know if my mom really had dementia. All that we know is that she started to lose grip on her daily routine tasks in 2024. With regular professional help we tried to grant her most passionate wish: stay in her house, my parental home, until she passed. It was not to be. Barely a year after the diagnosis she had a small stroke. That was enough to convince her that living independently was no longer an option. For four months she was moved to 3 different temporary places, before our home of preference had an opening. Not even 6 months later she suffered another stroke that ended her life within 1.5 days. Even at an age of 90 this is hard to stomach.
The last knitting project was put to the side a mere month before she passed. Despite the excellent care in the home, she frankly was bored out of her mind. More and more often she retired to her bedroom and I had to ring the real telephone to alert her to our daily video chat on a special senior device. I was worried about her. But I did not expect the end to come so quickly.
An ending that seems to be underlined by this knitwear project. It stabs me right in the soul and breaks my heart. Mom is gone. And I can’t stand it.
