Member-only story
A Dementia Patient and Her Moose
Ode to the woman I loved most
Did you see the moose?” the little old lady asked, her voice little more than a whisper, soft and thin. She pointed feebly. Since she had aged, and dementia had taken hold, Mom spoke less from her diaphragm. Even when she was happy, such as when bourbon was on offer, or peanut butter straight from the jar, I sometimes had to squint and turn my ear slightly toward her, as if bunching up the muscles around eyes rendered my ears more receptive.
And she had become less animated. In a general way, what I had observed in the decades since she became a widow was an endearing sort of girlishness. Only a year earlier, she would have reacted gleefully at the sight of a very large ungulate — something she had never seen in her 80-plus years of life — right outside her window. She was available to be genuinely awestruck. If big chunks of snow were falling from the sky on a perfectly still spring day, the wet kind that floated in clumps like stuffing from a dog toy, she would fling her head back, close her eyes, and gape her mouth open in hopes of catching one on her tongue.
But in reporting the sighting of a moose, she was cool. Matter of fact, even.
“Wait. What!?!,” I asked. I was surprised to hear the word “moose” come up again.
