Wise Mama with Dementia Gives Political Voice and Laughs

We needed some comic relief last week, after I'd traveled from Kansas on Monday to help celebrate my mother's 92nd birthday in Dallas.  By Tuesday, things had turned into a disaster of gloom.

For only three hours of my arrival, she began getting sick with an ordinary sore throat, followed by a urinary tract infection, that always plays havoc with cognition and agitation level in Alzheimer's. So, I'd been forced to postpone all plans for celebration and feared I'd be cancelling the celebration entirely. 

By Friday, we were back on course. The week ended up gloriously, with TWO parties--Mom's birthday plans carried out the day before I left her, and a large, lively Christmas party with "ordinary" folks outside her care facility the next day, hours before I left.

Meantime, it wasn't just Mom's condition, but my own, that made our success at getting her to see her cardiologist on Wednesday into a small miracle. I'd come with a leg injury, now four weeks old, and was about as dependent on a walker myself as Mom is every day. Still, we sat in the cardiologist's office, as if nothing serious had happened, thanks to Mother's caregiver, Sharon, who should herself be on Saturday Night Live because of her spontaneous sense of humor.

That doctor visit was supposed to be routine. It turned out to be a gift, carving a memory for me and her physician. And, now, I'm passing it on to you:

"So do you know the name of the President of the United States?" That's the question the cardiologist posed to Mom, after she'd successfully answered 7 out of 8 of questions he'd already asked while attempting to assess her level of dementia along with the status of her heart.

Her serious expression suddenly turned into a broad smile, then into total, busting-out-loud laughter. She nodded vigorously, with certainty. There was a glisten in her eyes I've not seen often in the past year, as we waited, for her verbal response.

"Trump!" she finally managed to say before beginning to giggle again.

That's all the cardiologist needed to know. She'd passed the test and opened a conversation that served as medicine for her doctor, I suspect. As a man, who by his own skin color and obvious ethnicity that makes him likely an immigrant, there's not a doubt in my mind he needed this comic relief as much as anyone.

"Even before Trump was elected, Mom told me one day:  'He scares me!'," I told the cardiologist.

"A lot of us feel the same way, Mrs. Sneed," he replied. "We just have to laugh because sometimes that's all we can do."

This we will, as we wait, hoping and praying for wisdom in the challenges of life, wherever we are.




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