The last day I visited my Mom was like visiting a fairy tale kingdom living under a curse.

I entered her Memory Care and didn’t recognize her right away. She was sitting at her dining table, slumped over sideways in her wheelchair, her long silver hair hanging down over her face, asleep maybe, or just in that dreamy daze she lives in now.

I saw her and felt that now-familiar punch to the heart. I ran to her, gently lifting her up so she was sitting up straight.

It seemed she might break.

“Mom,” I whispered, pushing the hair away from her face with the lightest touch, making my fingers light as butterfly wings. I didn’t want to startle her.

“Mom, it’s Marci. I’m here.” I looked into her face and she half-opened her eyes. No smile. No recognition. She closed them again. I wiped the hot tears from my eyes.

“Mom, look what I brought you.” I held up her Frappuccino with whipped cream, her favorite drink, the one thing that can dependably light her up for a moment, but she didn’t respond. I set it on the table.

She didn’t look comfortable. “Can I take her to her room so she can lay down and nap?”

The caregivers helped me, and it took two of them to gently lift her and pivot her into her bed. She laid propped to the side with pillows so her body doesn’t develop sores. After they left, I stood in front of her, feeling a bit lost myself.

She still didn’t recognize me, or even seem to know where she was.

Even worse, she didn’t look peaceful and dazed — she looked scared.

I tried to comfort her, leaning in close so she could see all the love in my face. “Mom, you’re safe. You’re okay.”

She stared at me.

I looked around for something to delight her, distract her, something. I handed her the little stuffed ballerina bunny I had brought from my sister’s house. She looked at it for a few minutes before that scared look came back into her eyes.

I turned on music, Kenny Rogers was always one of her favorites.

“On a warm summer’s evening, On a train bound for nowhere, I met up with the gambler, we were both too tired to speak. So we took turns staring, out the window at the darkness…”

The music wove its spell around the room and though she still didn’t respond, she seemed less afraid.

When I don’t know what to do, I often dance, and even worse, comedy-dance. I started acting out the song, pretending I was on a train, dancing out the parts of both the gambler and the other guy, drinking whiskey, playing poker, pretending I might know when to hold ‘em and fold ‘em, even though I actually have no idea when to do either in life.

She watched me act out the lyrics as the music turned dramatic: “The night got deathly quiet, and his face lost all expression, Said “If you’re going to learn to play the game, boy, you gotta learn to play it right.”

Then a miracle happened.

She laughed, and her laughter broke through the daze for one gorgeous precious second.

Encouraged, I continued my show. “Lucille” came on and I pretended to swagger into a bar in Toledo and sit down on a barstool. “I’m hungry for laughter, and here ever after, I’m after whatever the other life brings.”

When the guy with the calloused hands came into the bar, looking like a mountain, I waved my fingers and did my best mountain impression and she laughed again.

My Mom had always found my dancing and general tomfoolery hilarious. For family nights, I performed all sorts of dances that made her laugh so hard, and she’d usually jump up and dance with me. She bought me my very first belly dance costume because I didn’t have the $75, and when I performed for several months in a musical called Eating Raoul, described as a “bawdy, gleefully amoral tale” about serial killers, my Mom came to see it five times and as I stood backstage, I could hear her laughing so hard she was gasping for breath. I have always loved to hear her laugh.

Marty Robbins came on. “El Paso” was always a favorite at my house because it was about falling in love with a Mexican girl, which is exactly what my Dad had done with my Mom. I pretended to ride a horse, galloping around her room, then pretended to get shot and drag myself to the porch for one last kiss with Feleena, the Mexican girl.

This was the grand finale, and I held my hand across my forehead and draped myself across my Mom’s bed.

(I had to do this carefully as I had performed an elaborate death scene the night before when my nephew’s dinosaur with glowing eyes had attacked me and I had fallen to the floor, forgetting about my recent hip surgery and leaving me limping for the rest of the night.)

My theatrics worked—she laughed again, the sound like a warm ocean washing over a frozen land.

It felt like I had stepped into a scary fairy tale where the village is frozen under a curse, and the villagers don’t remember who they are, or recognize the people they love, and no one knows how to break the curse. In this version, it seemed like the warmth of her laugh chipped the ice a bit, breaking through the curse, even for one gorgeous moment. Although it was probably just wishful thinking on my part.

As I stood up from my death scene, her eyes closed and she drifted off, back into her other world.

Oh Mom. I pulled a chair over and sat down as close to her as possible, slipped my hand into hers so we were palm-to-palm, and spent the rest of the afternoon telling her stories while she slept, stories about this world, stories that would have made her laugh if she could have understood, and stories to remind her how truly and deeply she is loved.