Just my life now

I was driving away from my Sunday visit with May and thinking I really should call her Missouri friend Judy and give her a report. Judy is May's most loyal and thoughtful friend, and she's standing by her still. But I'm not much of a person for talking on the phone. I figured calling her was just another thing I should do but wouldn't -- and then, my cell phone rang. It was Judy. We talked about how May was doing and eventually Judy said, "Well here's how I'm doing..."

She had fallen and broken her shoulder. Had surgery last week, and now had to take pills (she's not a pill person) and do rehabilitation exercises (not that kind of person either). Said it all just "irritated" her.

"But I think about something May told me one time," she said. "It was not long after you moved to Evanston. I asked her how she felt about knowing that she had Alzheimer's, and she said, 'That's just my life now. I may not like it, but I wake up in the morning and I say, this is my life now, and if I can make it through this day I'll go to bed and wake up in the morning and it will be my life again tomorrow.'"

Judy said when it was time to take her pills and do her exercises, she thought of May and told herself, "This is just my life now."

Laughter, music and dancing

May was nowhere to be found when I visited just before lunch today -- but everyone had "just seen her."

"She was right here a minute ago," said Nicole, the staff person in charge of May's house. I took the opportunity to ask her why they had moved her to a different table in the dining room. Nicole said it was because they had noticed that May spent a lot of time visiting with a woman who ate at that table, so they thought it would be a good idea to have them sit together. "This other lady likes to laugh and joke," Nicole said. "And May, she likes to laugh and joke." Then she told me that they had just had a guest musician, who had asked May where she was from. When she answered "Oklahoma," the musician said she was from Oklahoma too and played a special song for May.

I went looking for her and ran into Max, the activities director. "She was just here," he said. "She was following me around." Then he laughed and said, "The musician played a song for her, Your Cheatin' Heart, you know--the Hank Williams song?" Yeah, I know that song. Max set off to help me find her.

I passed by the staff person for Country House, who said, "Hi Bill. She's over here in my house. I just saw her dancing." I headed down the long hallway of Country House and here she came in her bright red sweater, walking toward me from the far end of the corridor, a warm smile on her face.

I think she's getting the hang of it.

This year's critter

Sitting on a bench in a visiting area this afternoon, May looks straight ahead and says, "This is this year's colander...no...not that... Critter! This is this year's critter. They've all come out. They're all..." (and here she reaches out with her hands and shakes them back and forth).

"Are you describing something you're seeing?" I ask.

"Yes."

"Where?"

"Right there." She points toward a short table about three feet in front of us. It's surface is made of thin slats with half-inch gaps between them. A potted poinsettia occupies the far end of the table.

"Show me," I say.

She walks to the table and, again waving her hands around, roughs out a shape about the size of a large cat in the space opposite the poinsettia, then sits back down beside me.

"That's this year's critter?" I ask.

"Yes."