Tuesday, November 25, 2014 

You know how wireless phones are: they have many buttons. Why, when I visit another person’s house and am required to answer the phone for them, I sometimes have to search for the TALK button or the SPEAK button or the ON button. At home here, Mom often asks who is calling and why the light is blinking. I explain each time that the blinking light indicates that I have a message. This information doesn’t stick, of course, and she asks again and again and again. Her hearing is so impaired, she usually cannot even hear the phone ring.

But yesterday, mom not only heard the phone ring, she actually answered it. “Aunt” Betty was calling. Betty was as surprised as anyone that mom had answered. When mom asked who was calling, Betty explained it was she. So mom invited her over and told her she was very lonely. I was out shopping and Rob was in the yard raking leaves. He came in every 30 minutes to offer her juice or water, to help prevent dehydration. But we did not keep her constant company. How mom answered the phone is a mystery to us. Today, she looks at the instrument and does not hear it, does not know what the red blinking light means, and can only take the phone when I hand it to her to speak with her son. He’s the only person she knows over the phone. Mom doesn’t even know Ann, who lived with her for more than 2 years and who fed her and bathed her and dressed her. Yet, yesterday, mom called me Ann. There are residual memories locked deep within her brain somewhere. I am not sure if one can be happy when these memories surface; they must be so fleeting as to be foreign, or present as pictures of another lifetime, or perhaps someone else’s lifetime.

But there you are: on one minute and off the next—able to answer a phone, not able to hear the phone at all.