at the mall...

... to return something to JCP. I was in line, waiting for a cashier, and overheard a white haired woman ask the clerk if that entrance was the 'front door?' She got a positive response, and headed out into the parking lot, toddling along with her walking stick. I finished my business, completed my exchange and went out the door behind this elderly female.

Something - probably her question - made me know there was going to be a problem. I walked over to my car, and opened the door, but did not get in. Observing this woman without being overly blatant, it was obvious she could not find her car. As she walked back across the lane to the sidewalk in front of the store, I approached her and asked if she needed help. She said, as I had expected, that she had 'lost her car'. And asked me the same question she had posed to the cashier in the store. I told her I thought the entrance where we stood would be considered the front. She said she came in the side door. My comment was that there were actually three outside entrances to the store, so it could be confusing, adding that I occasionally had trouble with finding my vehicle as well.

I asked if I could walk with her to the side entrance, hoping she might recognize her car parked in the lot around the corner. When we came around the building, she said: 'There it is.' I wonder now if she really did find her car, or was just attempting to save face by getting rid of nosy me.

My thought when I first saw her, realizing she was having a problem: if it  were my mom, I would want someone who appeared to be un-threatening to offer assistance. Then later as I was driving home, I had another thought: 'when that becomes me, I hope someone will come to my rescue, take me in hand, help me find my way back home.'

I have a very clear memory of following my mom, when she left home one afternoon, at an angle as if in a stiff wind. Headed up the hill in that small community where she lived most of her life, on an un-named mission, determined to be someplace else. I could not go along, but could not let her go alone, so following as she started out. I didn't know what I would do when she ran out of steam, was too tired to get back home, but I dare not let her out of my sight. I trailed behind, certain that she would eventually slow and stop when her stamina ran out.

She did get weary, sat on the curb and eventually just laid down on the sidewalk. I have to wonder if she saw me as her captor, the one she was hopeful to escape from. She would not tell me where she was going, and probably did not have a destination in her mind when she walked out the door. Just the idea that she wanted to be someplace where I was not? We sat on the street long enough for someone, complete strangers, to stop and offer a ride. Returned home, and never mentioned this incident again.

She died in a nursing home, in 2009, with advanced dementia. I can still wonder where she was headed, and whether she was trying to escape me, or herself.  We will never know.