Telepathy?

I had a busy weekend and now my car is in the shop, so I haven’t seen Mom since Thursday. I went in Friday to drop off some disposable underwear, and I couldn’t find her anywhere. The activities director saw me looking around, and she told me she had seen Mom recently during the Friday ice cream activity, but then lost track of her. Mom wasn’t in her room or the lobby or in any hallways of her wing, either. We both guessed she might have popped into someone else’s room for a nap. Which is fine. There aren’t really any places to hide or get lost, so that seemed to be the most likely scenario.

So today I called the nurse just to see how Mom is doing. Interestingly, she said Mom had been fine until about 10 minutes ago, when she had had an altercation with another resident. “You saved me a phone call,” the nurse said. I said that was odd that it had just happened. I knew I wanted to call in today and had just paused and made the call on a whim at that time. As for the altercation, no one was injured. I asked who the resident was, but the nurse isn’t allowed to tell me. She said they “got into each other’s space” and that didn’t work out very well. She said it was after lunch, when many residents are tired and, I guess, possibly grumpy, too. By the time we were talking on the phone, Mom had settled in for her afternoon nap on the lobby couch. “That’s her spot every afternoon,” she said. She said that most of the time, Mom is either on the lobby couch or in the big program area at the other end of the center. I considered that to be good news. We both agreed that one good thing about Alzheimer’s is that both Mom and the other resident will likely forget they had a fight. I hope so. Mom sometimes has a firm grasp on anything negative and it can cloud her judgment about someone for good.

On Thursday, I went to see Mom shortly before lunch. I am having a hard time remembering where I found her that day. But what I do remember is something funny. She was wearing light blue cotton pants with pockets, and an aqua striped shirt that I have always liked. As we took a brief walk to and from her room, she kept her hands in her pockets. As I walked with her to the dining room, where I was going to drop her off for lunch, she said, “I feel like an interesting person, walking this way.” That is, walking with her hands in her pockets. It’s true, she ordinarily doesn’t keep her hands in her pockets, so I don’t know why she suddenly took up that habit. But I like it that she liked it.

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