Dementia Diary: Singing and Dancing at the Doctor's

When I told Mom she has jury duty, she remarked with a laugh, "They're not going to want me!" But I couldn't get her to sign the waiver. I positioned the pen in her hand, but she was puzzled and increasingly frustrated trying to figure out what the object in her hand had to do with the line I'd indicated on the form.

During the year of COVID quarantine when I saw Mom very little and always at a distance, her mind was forgetting how to walk, how to say what she wants to say, how to lift a glass of wine to her lips, and how much she used to like wine. Driving to restaurants for brunch the way we used to do pre-pandemic seems to be out of the question, now.

But at the eye doctor's office this afternoon, waiting between various tests and procedures, she remembered key words from songs on Pandora's "Sinatra Radio" station. I crooned, and she held my hand and sometimes kissed it, as Frank and I joined in on Come Fly With Me, Fly Me to the Moon, The Best is Yet to Come, I Only Have Eyes for You, The Tender Trap, plus At Last by Etta James, and They Can't Take That Away From Me by Ella and Louis.

Getting her from the wheelchair to the car presented a challenge. Happily, a couple of technicians from the doctor's office gave me advice. One of them was in the parking lot to talk me through the process:

• Lock the wheel chair alongside the car.
• Standing in the open door, bend down to let her encircle her arms around my neck -- like dancing!
• Grab her around the waist, tugging on pants if needed.
• Dance her around 'til her back faces the carseat, and let her sit.

We're at the stage that the neurologist warned us about in 2012. "She's at the beginning of the second stage of dementia, now. In the third stage, she'll forget how to walk, talk, swallow, and, eventually, to breathe." I'm treasuring this time while I may.

[Below: Mom confronts watermelon at the July 4th picnic. She went from "What is this?" to "MM-good!"]