Fast and Fleeting Moments

There's a woman, Jeanette, at Hillcrest who comes out to eat at the lounge area table when I'm there with Grandma at mealtime. She smiles, makes eye contact and initiates conversations very well, but as soon as the words are out of her mouth, she forgets what she was talking about or can't recall the thought in her head.

I can tell the neurons aren't connecting. I know she sees what she believes she sees, even if it's supposed to be her mother sitting right next to me... when the chair is empty. Once she told me she feels bad that she had left her mother alone for a second and her mother had some sort of accident and lost the eyesight in one of her eyes. She may have gotten poked or hit something, I couldn't tell and when I asked her the moment was gone and she forgot what she was talking about.

Is time really that hard to get a hold of? She doesn't seem to be upset that she lost her thought, because I guess if she can't hang on to it, and doesn't remember it was there, what should she get upset about? I really try to keep up with the "conversation," although sometimes a string of generalities comes out like "well it wasn't supposed to be done that way and I wanted it to be more definite...."

The thing that upsets me is that she doesn't eat. She sees the food in front of her, she sees the tableware, and looks like it came from Mars. She can't equate the fact that the food in front of her is a clue that she is supposed to eat. Yesterday she sat there with her fingers in her pie like she was getting a manicure. I picked up her fork and put a piece of roast beef in her mouth and she said "Where did that come from?"