In my mother’s final days, during her transition from an independent live wire, to a resident of heaven’s vestibule, she lived with Sharon and me for four months.
During that time, it wasn’t uncommon for her to call out my name in the middle of the night. I would go to her bedside and ask, “What do you need, Ma?”
Sometimes, she would simply ask, "What happened?"
Eventually I quit asking “When?,” or, “What do you mean?” because I realized it wasn’t a question grounded in logic; it arose from the shadowland between sleep and wakefulness.
I got the sense at those times that she had been dreaming of an earlier, happier time. Dreaming, maybe, of her childhood, or of the high-energy days as a young mother, or of her time as a widow carousing in the casinos.
Suddenly, because of some trick of time, she was a feeble woman, dependent on others.
So, what happened? Life happened, Ma. Time happened.
The older I get, the more I understand the question.
(The photos shows my mother (on the right) at age 6 or so with her sister and in the late 1990s).