Ralph GrunewaldI gawk at the chair where I’d left Mom waiting for me. She’s gone. I scan the lounge, a midsize room of muted grays and whites. There’s a disheveled young man stretched out on the blue sofa, a few students eating lunch at the tables, a row of anonymous computer stations by the wall. Panic flutters in my throat.
Mom has vanished.
I’ve been taking care of my 93-year-old mother, who has vascular dementia, for over a year. She is independent and smart and has a great sense of humor. She just can’t remember anything. She loves to travel and refuses to be left behind. While I run errands or keep appointments, she sits in the car or waiting room, reading. She never wanders away. Never, until today.
The student lounge is on the ground floor of a stately old building on a large university campus in New York City. I pray Mom is still in the building, not wandering the streets.
Two students now sit at the table where I’d left Mom eating her sandwich less than an hour ago. I told her I’d be in an office just around the corner. “I’m not moving from this spot!” she’d said, emphasizing each word with a finger-jab at the floor. She was exhausted by the trek from our car, parked on Broadway. Why did she get up and leave?
According to the Alzheimer’s Association, about 60 percent of people who suffer from dementia wander at some point. Rather than being truly aimless walking, wandering is often goal-oriented. It is prompted by a desire to find someone or something: a previous home or workplace, or maybe a family member. In some cases, people wander away from home. In other cases, like my mother’s, people wander when they’re alone in an unfamiliar place.
About 50 percent of people with dementia who wander away risk serious injury or death if not found within 24 hours.
The students at Mom’s table are chatting animatedly. “Excuse me,” I break in, “did you see an elderly lady with white hair sitting here?”
They look at each other, eyebrows raised. “Yes … well, I think …” One of them frowns and shakes his head. “She left a while ago.”
Adrenaline surge. “How long ago?”
“Oh, maybe 15 minutes ago.”
The fear turns to tin on my tongue. Fifteen minutes can make a person with no memory very lost, especially on the streets of New York.
The two students have already returned to their conversation. “Did she ask you where the ladies’ room is?” I ask abruptly.
They shake their heads. “No, she didn’t say anything. She just got up and left.”
“Thanks,” I mutter and rush off to the nearest ladies’ room, one flight down. It’s empty. I almost collide with a student coming in and barely restrain myself from grabbing her. “Did you see an old woman my height with short white hair?”
“No,” she answers, looking scared.
Pushing past her, I check the corridor. The rooms are all dark, locked.
Once, when my son was only 1, my husband and I lost him in a big store. We looked away for a moment, and he was gone. I remember searching aisle after aisle, calling his name, the feeling of disbelief, the urgent terror of not even knowing where to look. Outside the door in the busy parking lot? In the next aisle? Walking away holding a stranger’s hand?
This feels the same: the ballooning panic, the prickling sense of unreality. People going about their cheerful business with no idea the world is crumbling.
I punch the elevator button. The creaky contraption finally arrives, empty. I rush back to the student lounge: Still no Mom, still two students at her table.
“Hey, listen,” I say. They look up, their eyes big. “My mother is missing. She has dementia. She wandered away. If she shows up, just get her to wait here for me, O.K.?”
“Sure,”
says the young man glancing at this watch, “but I have to go to class soon.”
“Me, too,” says the young woman apologetically.
“O.K., I’ll be right back,” I say, spinning. There are women’s bathrooms on Floors 3 and 6.
On the third floor, I find the man who cleans the bathrooms wheeling his cart. He hasn’t seen my mother. “Oh, I know, I know,” he says, bobbing his head, smiling. “I look for your mother. O.K.”
Six is empty and quiet. I take the stairs down, running, sweating now, stopping on every floor to search the corridors. Nobody has seen a small, fragile lady with white hair wearing a black coat.
Back on the ground floor, I burst into the student lounge again, desperate to believe Mom is still in the building. But no. Even the students I spoke to are gone. The table is empty.
When my son vanished all those years ago, he could not yet talk. But he could cry, and after my husband and I scoured that store for searing minutes, we found him howling in a bathroom he could not exit.
I stand in the deserted lobby and think: Mom has tools. She has her pocketbook, in which there is a piece of paper with my name, address and phone number. She also has a determined and pragmatic personality. She’s not likely to panic. Mom is more the type to snag a sturdy, good-looking young man and tell him she needs help.
Of course! There’s a phone in the lobby, and I call campus security. “My name is Celia Seupel,” I say, “and I’ve lost my mother.”
“Oh, yes, wait a minute,” says the campus security man. It sounds like he is talking to somebody else on another phone. “Yes,” the man says to me again, “we have your mother. Your mother is with one of the security guards by the fountain. She’s been looking for you.”
Back in the bold sunlight, I approach that gracious old fountain and see my mother holding court. She is seated on a stone bench, her black coat spread out, chatting with one guard while another hurries up the steps to give her a fresh bottle of cold water.
She turns and smiles as she catches sight of me, waving a hand like Queen Elizabeth. “Here’s my daughter now,” she tells the guards.
I pull up in front of them, puffing.
“There you are,” says Mom.
“I lost you,” I say, giving her a hug. “Are you O.K.?”
“I’m just splendid.” Mom beams at the two guards. “These gentlemen have been very kind.”
The two guards beam back at Mom. “Here’s your water,” says the second one, handing her the bottle.
“Your mother was looking for you,” the first says to me, grinning.
Caring for an aging parent can be tough and unrelenting, but at that moment, the joy surging through my body reminds me how much Mom has given me. Not just life, but the grit to keep on going. Not just love, but the celebration of love.
I can’t possibly express to these men how grateful I am. I write down their names, promising to commend them to their boss, wishing I could do more. But I can tell from the light in their eyes that they already have their reward. It’s that thing which confirms the meaning of the job. It’s that lesson many students have yet to learn: To give is to receive; to help another is to be blessed.