Abstract
A smile of recognition, a brief exchange. And seated only a few feet from the TV, she resumes watching some old movie in black and white—film noir, and no one I recognize. She’ll answer questions right through whatever plot's unfolding on the screen, but most of her thoughts are out of order—a hand of cards that needs arranging into suits. Fact...
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A smile of recognition, a brief exchange. And seated only a few feet from the TV, she resumes watching some old movie in black and white—film noir, and no one I recognize. She’ll answer questions right through whatever plot's unfolding on the screen, but most of her thoughts are out of order—a hand of cards that needs arranging into suits. Fact or fancy? And which is which? So I do the talking. And she peers out absently, a reader stuck on a paragraph, back and forth over the same sentences—the whole time her fingers busy on her lap, knitting without yarn, and the room we're in growing smaller. Still I talk, though there's no tug at the other end of the rope and by now I’ve used up the safe topics: food, weather, the new chair in the corner. On the bedside table, last week’s roses sag in a clear vase of murky water, and the book-lined shelves are more wall now than reading matter. The air is dry. My throat, too. Only twenty minutes—and I’m out of words, slipping back into one of those moments on a stopped train where I watch the train beside me start to move—though all along it's the one I’m on that's moving.
JAMA – American Medical Association
Published: Jun 11, 2008
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