The Legs Are the Last to Go by Diahann Carroll

Scaasi and Bill Blass, had become seriously sedate in my latter years. She, on the other hand, was still having a ball with her colorful clothes, like a girl in a sparkly fantasy.
    I sat in that car, grinning, even as I shook my head.
    â€œOkay, Mom, I’ll make a deal with you. If you take off either the necklace or the earrings or the scarf, then you can decide where we go to lunch today.”
    She never did. But I let her choose the restaurant anyway.
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    It happens eventually: the end. I was lucky it took as long as it did.
    In her last years, when she was close to ninety, I’d notice crumbs on her clothes and stains on her sleeves, and I had to find a way to tell her without letting her know how badly she was failing. But she wanted to dress and wear heels right to the end, like me.
    Eventually, she was in and out of emergency rooms, because she refused to have full-time help around. “I don’t want you,” she’d tell them. “You’re making me old before my time!” It became painfully clear she could not live alone in her house anymore. Against her wishes, our old friend Sylvia and I toured a lovely place near my home in Hollywood. And I did something very clever. I spoke with a young lady working there, and I said to her, “You know, I really have a terrible problem. I want my mother to move here so she’ll be safe, but she doesn’t know a soul in this building, so I’m very worried.” And this young lady smiles at me, and says, “I know who you are. You’re Diahann Carroll. You were always so pleasant to everyone when you came to shop at my uncle’s antique store, Ferrantes, on Melrose Place in Hollywood. So I’m going to keep an eye on your motherand see that she gets a perfect room over the garden fountain.” I was so pleased. And I thought to myself, “So after spending all that money on antiques, it finally paid off!”
    When we drove her over to look at the place, she was dressed to the nines, and although unhappy, she did enjoy arriving in my Rolls-Royce, just so people knew where she was coming from. Then I saw the look on her face when she saw how deluxe the place was, or perhaps a better word would be grand . Dining room was very nice. TV and game room? Not bad at all. I told her, “Okay, we don’t have to speak to anyone today about any of this. Let’s just go to the Beverly Wilshire for a fabulous lunch.” She pouted all the way through it, still angry about having to move out of her house. But we all worked to make her new room in that rest home as much like her house as possible. And eventually, she started to enjoy dressing for dinner with other well-to-do people in the dining room every night, and I was pleased.
    Still, it was sad to see her wane. One day, my dear friend Selbra Hayes asked what did I think would make my mother happiest, and suggested inviting my father out to visit. Immediately, I recognized the importance of that advice. My father was single again. His second wife had passed away several years earlier. So I invited him out to Los Angeles. I told him Mom wanted him to see where she was living.
    He arrived, eighty-eight years old, still tall and so handsome. And when I brought those two together, and they saw each other for the first time after so many years, it was the best Hollywood love scene I could imagine. They both looked ecstatic, like there was nowhere else they wanted to be. After a few minutes, we all had to sneak out and allow them to have theirtime alone together. My father stayed with me all week. And every morning he would get up and dress impeccably. We’d have breakfast. Then I’d drive him over to see Mom and he’d stay there with her all day. Maybe it was my dream as well as theirs, to have them back together, if only for a week. He came back again a year later, when she was still well enough to sit with him outdoors. And they looked like they’d never