2001-02-28 - 23:59:46

Owl Woman

Today I had to take Lily to the dentist. Oh, there was nothing wrong with her adorable teeth, it was just a routine checkup. Lily hadn't been to see a dentist in a while, so I set her up with the guy that I've been going to myself for years and years.

Silly me! I just realized that I've brought up this subject before.

Anyway, while Lily was seeing the dental hygenist, I was at the front counter filling out some paperwork. I suddenly became aware of this hooting noise, "woot, woot, woot," like there was an owl in the room. I looked in the waiting room, and I realized that the hooting was coming from an old lady who was calmly reading a magazine while sitting next to her husband. She didn’t seem to be aware she was making the noise.

At first I thought that it was funny, because it was a funny noise, but it became plain pretty quickly that the old lady was suffering from Alzheimer's or some other form of senility. She seemed very simple and childlike, and when her husband was gone she started talking to me, asking me questions like: "How did you get here?" and "What color is your car?"

For the way she was talking to me it was plain that she had mistaken me for someone that she actually knew.

It was sad for a couple of reasons. It was plain that the woman had some sort of glimmerings that something wasn't right with her head. At one point she looked up at her husband and remarked: "I said something again, didn’t I?" Implying that things frequently came out of her mouth that she didn’t realize she had said.

I also felt sorry for her husband. He seemed very patient and full of tender solicitude, and it was obvious he still loved her but I thought life had pulled a nasty trick on him. He gets a ringside seat as the woman he loves gets more childlike and befuddled, day by day.

It's odd, that when I run across old people with mental problems none of them seem like my father. There is a clear sense that whatever is wrong with their heads has clearly changed their personalities: they think they are living in the past, talking to long dead people, or something like that. My father, on the other hand, becomes more like himself every day. He is as self-absorbed and compulsive as ever, just a little more foggy and vague, but some of that may be the medication they are giving him. He was getting kind of cranky and threatening toward the helpers at the adult home, so they put him on some anti-psychotics to mellow him out.

I guess Dylan Thomas was wrong: old age SHOULDN'T burn and rage at close of day. It should sit quietly, napping in the TV room.

It's strange that this little chance encounter with that woman and her husband should stick with me from this day. I can certainly guess why: I know that I have a horror of losing my mind, having my body outlive my consciousness. I can only hope that myself and those I care for will be spared that last indignity.

Woot.