“Why are we here?” she asks me, with what I detect to be a bit of an edge to her voice.

I am opening the car door for my mother

so I can help her get out

to go into the restaurant

for her favorite soup

that she just told me she wanted ten minutes ago.
It’s raining.

I’m not “in a good mood.”

I’ve got the WTF attitude on.

I ignore the fact that she doesn’t want to be here and claims that she never wanted soup.

I assist her out of the car, we go into the restaurant, sit down, order and we wait.

The soup comes and she refuses to eat it.

My mom tells me that I need to go get my mind checked, that I need some common sense in that brain of mine.

Ten minutes after we enter, we leave the restaurant with two soups in a doggie bag.
30 minutes after starting out on our “lunch date,” my mom is back to her room, telling me to go home when we reach her door.

That’s exactly what I do.

I go home, sit down and eat both soups.
I realized that I do need to check my mind, or better yet, I need to keep my mind in check!

My mind that sometimes insists that everything needs to be a certain way and can takes things very personally.

What I am running up against, is that in the world of dementia, nothing is certain.

The road map changes constantly.

And when it does, I’m left lost and confused

every time I forget to use my common sense and remember

that I am not in control

of either my mother or her disease.

And by the way, those two soups were really good!