Hello again,

In the depths of the COVID pandemic which caused so much misery at home and around the world, my mother’s luck ran out.

When I awoke to find her packing her bags early one morning , I was confused. She was rushing about declaring we had to leave. It took some time for me to grasp that she thought we were at her sister’s in England and we had to hurry to catch a train.

At first, she was not prepared to listen to reason, but after much persuading in which I assured her we were at home in Canada, led her to the window to see where we were, she calmed down, but not before she stepped out into the hallway and called down the stairway for her sister.

She remained agitated, however. I asked her if she would like to go for a ride in the car. She agreed, and we drove around the neighbourhood, as I pointed out what I hoped were familiar landmarks. The most prominent of these was the Garden City Shopping Centre, which is only a block away from where we live. At the time, she was going there once a week to have her hair done. It was a Sunday morning, all the shops were closed, but the doors to the mall were open, and we went inside. I was hoping to jog her memory, and it worked, sort of. She realized how close it was to where we lived, but this sparked a new delusion. Although she had been going to the Garden City Shopping Centre for years to get her hair done, in the past, she used to go downtown. She seemed to think she still went downtown, but to a shopping centre there which was identical to the one in Garden City. How, she asked, could there be two identical shopping centres, with all the same staff, including the hairdresser she always went to? I let that question lie, and took her home, where she fell into a deep sleep. She woke up around noon. She was still very disoriented, and I said, okay, we have to go to the hospital. She knew something was wrong and she agreed.

I thought she might have a urinary infection. I had heard of such things from a number of my friends. So off we went to the hospital in the middle of COVID and waited for a doctor to see my mother.

It was not as long a wait as you might imagine, but it was long enough. The diagnosis, however, was not what I had expected at all, but something else entirely.

Until we meet again, how about a word nerd joke?

Q. What’s the difference between a cat and a comma?

A. One has claws at the end of its paws, and the other is a pause at the end of a clause. (Groan)