I stared at the x-ray and momentarily couldn’t understand who I was looking at.

Was this my bone structure? Or my mother’s? Or both?

My bottom teeth have moved, and I’ve noticed speech changes. My dentist referred me to an orthodontist, who took all sorts of x-rays. When the technician showed me the profile view, my stomach lurched. This was the face of my mother as she lay dying. The hollowed cheeks, the sunken eye sockets.

I remember the first time I looked at photos from the last days of Mom’s life. And thinking, “That’s not what she looked like.” I was diligent to take photos every day that I visited Mom. I regret not taking more photos of me and Dad, and his death came so quickly. I vowed not to make the same mistake with Mom. As I took the photos, I remember thinking how beautiful she was, and how I cherished each moment we had together, whether she was cognizant of those moments or not.

And later, when I looked at those photos, I was shocked. I didn’t see a beautiful octogenarian. I saw a skeleton of a human, wasting away.

And now I wonder, is it better to have a physical representation of a loved one, like a photo? Or better to have an image in one’s mind, encapsulating the feelings and emotions around the experience? After revisiting photos of Mom’s last weeks, I prefer the latter. I want to remember her as a beautiful soul, irrespective of what her physical representation was.