An old memory is good therapy

When it starts to break down, it breaks down across the board: mental, physical, emotional. Yesterday she was walking out of her wing of the building just as I was turning toward it. I was a welcome sight to distressed eyes. "I'm so glad to see you," she said. After a hug, she whispered, "I don't like it here. They're not teaching me anything." We started walking our usual route and I noticed that her left arm was clutched toward her midsection. I asked if she had a stomachache and she said, no, it was her arm. I took the arm in both of my hands and massaged it as we walked. She said that helped.

There was a lot of random fear: "If I have to go home, I'm going to be scared," she said, out of the blue. Later, as we passed the dining room, she said, "If I have to go in there, I'm going to be scared."

Eventually, we stopped in the activities room where Carmen was visiting with two older, but more coherent, residents. One of them asked if I was ever going to bring Adam back, because he showed her how to play darts. At the mention of Adam's name, May managed a small smile. The other resident turned the topic toward the lunch menu, and whether she would be able to eat everything they served her. There was speculation about whether May was a good eater or not. I said, "I'm sure she eats everything. That's how she was raised, back on the ranch. She couldn't leave the table until she had cleaned her plate." May smiled at the memory, so I decided to stick with a winner.

"When she was a teenager," I said, "her job in the summer was to have the noon meal ready for all the field hands when they came in. The noon meal was the big meal. It wasn't called 'lunch,' it was called 'dinner.' The men might be baling hay or harvesting wheat, and they would be hungry in the heat of the day. The summer that May was reading Gone With the Wind, she would lose track of time. She would look up and see the trucks coming toward the house, and she had not begun to prepare a meal. She was in trouble with her dad most of that summer, until she finished the book, and there were a lot of pages in that one." Everyone was laughing and saying, "Is that right, May?" She was nodding her head and smiling grandly. At that moment, she was not afraid.