Hello again, friends and relatives. Mom was in the dining hall today when I came in this afternoon. There's a big television there, and it's not unusual for her to spend some time there a few times a week. She does not socialize, but she hears the talk around her, and of course the television is always on. I'm not exactly certain that she gets anything out of it, truth be told, but I doubt she'd prefer to be secluded in her room.
I stayed around an hour this afternoon, and tried to talk to her. She looked at me but did not speak to me at all, until I was almost out the door. I said I was going, but that I'd come back later in the day. She surprised me by answering "I'm sorry." I'm thinking it's possible that she's lost a bit of the selective filter most of us have, which allows us to zoom in on a familiar voice that's close by. Or perhaps there was just so much going on there that she was overwhelmed and withdrew. It was truly as if she could not communicate at all. But I also know that she's spent many visits in her room at about the same level of communicativeness. So who knows.
I returned this evening a little before seven, and it was a different story. We traded greetings (a pretty good sign right there,) and I told her a story about our rear passenger side window getting blasted out by a stray rock hurled from a landscaper's weedwacker last week. I told her we'd brought the car in to get the window done, and they'd taken care of it right away. She let me off a hook she may have believed I thought I was on, opining, "Well, you can't do everything."
I asked her if she'd like to call someone, and she answered - I loved this - "I want to call everyone." So, I did try everyone, and reached one friend (Jenni). They had a nice few words together. I asked if she enjoyed the call, and she said "it's a warm gift."
Sometimes I think although she's got far less facility with speaking, some of the things she says are much more poetic. Maybe it's the act of reaching for words that mean the right thing, where most of us simply talk.
In any event, we talked a little more, then I played guitar for her until a little after eight. More tomorrow,
Dan
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