The Butt Dial

Tonight, my phone rang.  It was in my purse, and by the time I fished it out, the phone had stopped ringing. 

It was my mother in law's former next door neighbor, and best friend.  She had butt-dialed us (she was playing with some of her grandchildren).  But, while my husband was on the phone with her, we talked a little. She wanted to know how her friend was doing.  She wanted to know how my autistic brother in law, Bil, was doing.

She will call my mother in law, who is 90 and has early dementia, and the next day my mother in law won't remember anything. But at least my neighbor still calls.

Enough people who once cared about her have seemed to have disappeared.  Or maybe they call her, and she doesn't remember when my husband asks.  She claims "no one called her".

We have been going through photos in her apartment.   And there are so many people in those photos we don't know.

Others, we take an educated guess.

Are these people alive? Do they care? Or, knowing she is losing her memory, do they decide it is to painful to watch her decline?

I can identify.  It's painful for us, and the friend who butt dialed.   And maybe for Bil,but he interacts so little with her that we don't know.  Like some with autism, he doesn't share his inner thoughts with us.

But I'm glad she butt-dialed.  So glad.