On our first visit, to the dementia ward together Saturday morning, Red and I  had some beautiful moments, as I did with Izzy. I have learned that the demented are usually on cable TV shooting their mouths off, not in dementia units. Dementia wards are usually at one end of nursing homes, you need to punch in a special code to open the doors  to get in and then again to get out. Dementia units also reveal themselves through the toys and dolls that are all around, dementia patients often revert to their childhoods.  You can always spot a dementia nurse, too, they are invariably patient and quick to laugh. A sense of humor is important in the dementia wards.

We knocked on one door, asked if we could come in, and Rebecca turned off her TV – “lot of junk,” she said – and called for us to come in. She was almost totally deaf. She leaned over Red, stroked his head and I told her he came from Ireland. “Oh, Ireland,” she said, “do you know there is no word for “love” in Gaelic?” This was a surprise, it was already not the conversation I was expecting in the memory care unit, and I knelt down as she was hard of hearing and when she looked at Red her eyes glistened and she spoke of the little dog that had gone to live with her daughter. “Is this my dog?,” she asked, and I said no, I never lie to people in dementia wards, it is disrespectful in my mind, and she asked me whose dog was it?, and I said, “he is my dog. He came from Ireland.” And she asked me if I knew the name for “Red” in Gaelic and I said I did not, but I would love to hear it.

And she pronounced it for me, urging me to roll the “r’s,” it sound like “Rheeaha,” and I repeated it several times, and she shook her head and said I didn’t quite get it, and then she patted Red for a few minutes and he was still, picking up the thread of the moment, as he does, and then she turned to me and said “Is this my dog?” and I said no, he was my dog, and I asked her why there was no word for “love” in Gaelic, and she said she could not imagine.

A few minutes later, Red and I were across the hall in another room and I heard an awful keening, a sobbing, a loud and sorrowful moaning and Red and I followed the sound back into the room of the woman we had been visiting and  tears were streaming down her cheeks, “no,no, no, no, no!” she was shouting and I walked Red up to her and he put his head on her lap and she looked up at me in shock and then down at him and stared.  She stopped crying, stopped moaning, and then, a smile.

She looked up at me, looked confused and then down at Red, and the fog seemed to clear.

“Oh,” she said. “What a sweet and beautiful creature.” And then she turned and looked up at me.

“Is he my dog?”

“You tell me,” I said.