Shirley Kaplan

Mother: Rose Kaplan, 92 yrs.

Father: ?

Shirley’s best memory is of her mother being away for five years at a tuberculosis treatment center when Shirley was eleven. She remembers feeling "empty". She thought she had given her mother TB.

Rose’s memory has been going for the last five years. She confuses Shirley and her sister for each other. She’ll say "Stay with me, I’m gonna remember…" Shirley says they have stopped talking about the past and only talk about the present, because her mother finds it painful to realize she has forgotten things.

"People…we’re like plants – we get a little brown around the edges."

"You become the caretaker…and the memory."

Her mother remembers pieces of things, which Shirley can remember more of and fill in the cracks. Her mother is very sad about losing her memory. She used to be very controlling and manipulative, but she can’t be anymore because she doesn’t have "her history to use".

"When she’s frustrated, so am I."

Shirley’s always tried to make her mother happy, but she can’t make this better for her, although it does give Shirley pride to help her mother.

"I was always trying to help her. She was impossible to help…until now."

Her mother now wants to move in with Shirley, but she requires 24hr care, which Shirley cannot provide.

Shirley had problems with her father; "He wasn’t a person for a lot of love". He was a loud and angry man. The marriage was fixed. He got Parkinsons disease when Shirley was sixteen and died the next year. Shirley says the relationship got better as he "got more quiet".

Shirley’s father mistook her for her mother a lot. He would tell her very early memories of his childhood in Poland, thinking she was his ex-wife. Rose got very angry at this, feeling she had been deserted by both of them.