A Temporary Glitch

Some section of Mom's brain shut down last night.

Just before it was time to change her Alzheimer's medication patch and start her eye drops, she got up to go to the bathroom promising to return "in a minute". Twenty minutes later, I went to check up on her (she can sometimes take a long time in there so I wasn't worried). She was in her room, rearranging clothing carefully laid out on her bed. I asked if she was coming out soon and reminded her it was past time for the meds. She said, "Yes," so I went back to the living room.

Another forty minutes gone by, I checked again. She was still in her room, in the dark, having tried and failed to change clothes for no obvious reason. The end result being she had put her underwear on over her pants. (It was funnier in Woody Allen's Bananas.) I turned on the light and tried explaining this to her several times with no success.

Finally, after a couple more visits from me and over two hours late for her meds, she emerged wearing a pullover shirt as a skirt (not for the first time). At that point I didn't care and quickly changed her patch and administered the drops. It was an hour past her normal bedtime. She sat on the couch.

Then she turned to me and said, "Where do you go after you're done working here?"

"Nowhere, Mom. I live here with you."

"Really. I don't recognize you. Have we met?"

"I'm your son."

"I never knew that. And what about the others?"

"There are no others, Mom. It's just the three of us. You and your two sons."

"Upstairs?"

"There is no 'upstairs'. This is a ranch house. My room is across the hall from yours."

"I know that. I meant downstairs. You live here?"

"Across the hall."

"And yet I've never seen you before. I don't know why we've never met."

"You see me every day, Mom. I make your breakfast and I make your dinner and I give you your eye drops every day."

"Really. I never knew that."

"Well, you did know it but you just forgot."

"Well, it's good to know. Again." I did have to smile at that.

After that, she folded up some of her clothes I had just taken from the dryer and went to bed. She slept through the night without interruption and, in fact, I could hear her gently snoring through her door.

This morning she awoke at her usual time, bright, chipper, cheerful and fully cognizant. She knows me, knows where she is and recalls nothing of last night's episode. Maybe it was just a combination of exhaustion and over-concentration from trying to dress in the dark.