I’ve been visiting Bonnie at a long-term care facility almost every Tuesday afternoon for several months.

She has dementia and is not in an accelerated state of decline. I suspect I’ll be around to share that experience when the time comes.

Although our visits are frequent and she’ll often read my volunteer’s badge out loud, Bonnie never calls me by name. She can’t tell me what she had for lunch fifteen minutes before I arrive or even if it was good.

At times, she’ll try to lift herself up from her wheelchair to stand up, and I’ll try to make up an appealing reason for her to stay seated. Often, we’ll have an uneasy exchange.  She wants to get her way and my appeal for safety doesn’t make sense to her.

But I’ll hold her hand often, and she’ll squeeze mine back, and I think I’m making a difference.

For years now, I’ve touted the value of being in the present moment. I think it’s ironic that it is easier to be in the moment with someone else’s aging parent than to be in the moment with your own. It never dawns on me that my assigned companion should be some other way.

It doesn’t bother me that I’m not called by name or that what I think would be an important shared memory is mine alone.

Often, Bonnie will offer to share her afternoon snack with me, a foil package containing two large “home style” chocolate chip cookies. I always say no, but I think it’s so sweet that although she can get agitated and raise her voice at me, sharing something she enjoys is a natural impulse.

She’ll often read newspaper headlines to me when another “visitor” leaves the day’s Sun Times on the activities table but doesn’t seem interested in the story or even the meaning of the words she reads. I think she just likes someone listening to her.

When I first came to the facility to meet Bonnie and her daughter, to talk about Bonnie’s background and see if she’d be okay with regular visits, I learned about a family of five daughters growing up on a small farm southwest of Chicago. All the sisters are still very close and visit Bonnie regularly.

I learned that Bonnie liked to sing and that her daughter Tracy was keeping a list of some of her favorites.

I Googled the lyrics to most songs on the list, typed them out and got the staff to make copies. After passing Bonnie’s songbook out to most of the second floor residents, several started to sing with us.

“Daisy, Daisy,” “Que Sera Sera,” and “Momma, Don’t let your Babies Grow up to be Cowboys” were among her favorites. If I ever had problems getting her attention, I’ll start singing, “I’m back in the saddle again….”

Without skipping a beat, Bonnie will finish the line… “Back where a friend is a friend. Where the longhorn cattle feed on the lowly gypsum weed. Back in the saddle again.”

Sometimes, we’d sing a cappella.  Sometimes, I’d play tunes on Spotify through my phone.

On that first visit, when I met Bonnie and Tracy, we played a simple card game with two very worn decks of cards pulled out from the basket that contained coloring books and photo dominated magazines. We played what I called War, what Tracy called “High-Low.”

Basically, we passed out all the cards. Bonnie, Tracy and I turned over a card from the top of our piles and whoever had the card with the highest value collected everyone else’s card for that round.

Tracy made a big fuss whenever Bonnie had the highest card. On one round, Tracy and her mother both placed aces on the table. Noticing that they pulled the same card in different suits, Bonnie asked her daughter, “Who wins?”

“Hearts always beats Diamonds,” Tracy responded, insisting that her mother’s card was more valuable and should take the trick.

I know from playing bridge in my family that there is a hierarchy to suits. Diamonds is more valuable than Clubs. Hearts beat Diamonds and Spades beat Hearts.  But I suspect that if Bonnie plunked down the ace of Clubs, that would be declared the most valuable card on the table.

Bonnie chuckled as her daughter scooped up the cards for the round and placed them along her mother’s side of the table. Even though she was not quite sure what she had accomplished, she beamed. Tracy and I couldn’t keep from smiling.

Knowing that the highest form of “winning” is taking pleasure when someone else “wins” is no small thing.

Re-printed with permission.

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