“I’m Still Alive!”

When a 100-year-old goes to the hospital, she may not return.

My mother and me after she was released from the hospital. Photo courtesy of the author.

The word came on a Sunday morning: My mother had been rushed to the hospital with apparent pneumonia. My sleep-addled brain took a few seconds to realize that the infection could bring a speedy end to her 100-year run on life. I raced to find the next departure from Alaska to Maine.

Twenty-two hours later I found my mother in a hospital bed, her small frame hidden by the metal rails. She blinked when she heard my voice.

“Is that you, Nancy?” She was surprised to see me. Her short-term memory loss means that she can no longer keep track of my comings and goings and instead I take care of her.

“Is this where I live?”

“No,” I told her, “this is the hospital.”

I described her room in the assisted living residence decorated with pictures of her parents and other ancestors and reminded her of the mahogany secretary with the etched glass doors that had been in her house for a century or more.

“Funny, I can’t get any picture of it all.”

When a person’s short-term memory goes, almost nothing that happened since the onset of the illness can be recalled. I know it bothers my mother that she can’t remember anything but she makes up for it by…