A friend is a friend is a friend

Opinion

My mother has a friend she does not know.

For privacy’s sake I’ll call her Peggy, but that is not her name.

Peggy sees things that aren’t there; imagines slights with others that have not occurred; nurses old grudges.

She is physically frail and exceedingly fierce.

Sometimes she has animated conversations with herself that get heated, chastising someone who is invisible to everyone but her.

Like my mother, she has dementia.

They are chalk and cheese. Peggy is feisty, caustic, sarcastic — all sharp corners and edges. Mom is gentle, kind and good-natured. They spend hours a day together, sitting on the couch in the lobby of their retirement home, watching the world go by.

Sometimes Peggy will rail on about a car or a person passing outside, while my mother, oblivious, sings snatches of The Squid Jiggin’ Ground or Galway Bay. Sometimes Peggy mocks Mom, making a chatty gesture in the air with her hand as if to say some people don’t know when to stop talking. But they are friends all the same.

They both love to laugh, even if it isn’t always at the same thing — their humour is infectious. They tell each other the same anecdotes day after day and yet it never seems to get old. Peggy likes to talk about the fun she and her friends had as teenagers in St. John’s, dancing with boys they took a shine to. Mom likes to recall how her teacher (my father) admired her singing, and asked her to marry him.

They grew up in completely different circumstances — Peggy in the city and mom in an isolated outport — but those things don’t matter now.

Once I was walking through the lobby with mom — gesturing for her to take a seat on the couch, next to Peggy.

“You can sit here,” I said.

“You’re not the mother!” Peggy muttered under her breath in my general direction.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said, with a mischievous grin.

I didn’t mind her sharp retort, as it seemed to suggest that she would come to mom’s defence if she felt someone wasn’t treating her right.

When my mother was younger, she had a multitude of friends, often people she met through her church. Potlucks, charity teas, craft stalls, service clubs — mom’s life was a social whirl—a calendar chock-full of commitments that involved giving back to the community, and spending time with like-minded people. She never met a soul she didn’t find some good in.

With the onset of dementia, and once she could no longer live independently, mom’s friendships waned. Some people died, some just drifted away, perhaps because she could no longer remember them, and could no longer visit with them in the same way.

With Peggy, she has found a companion, someone with whom she can while away the hours. She may not remember her friend’s name, but she knows her face and that’s enough.

Once, my sister was visiting and noticed that mom was not wearing the ring she had given her not long before. With the help of a member of staff, they rifled under couch cushions and checked the floor until they spied the ring on Peggy’s hand. It was just like mom to notice that Peggy didn’t have any rings, and to give away her own. It was a true gesture of friendship —a reflection of her generous spirit.

An American study on friendships among people with dementia in long-term care, reported in 2012, that “While challenges in communication may make it more difficult to understand the quality of friendships among people with later stages of dementia, these challenges do not mean that friendships are not possible or that people in advancing stages are incapable of making new friends.”

French-American diarist Anaïs Nin wrote, “Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born,” and I like to think it’s that way with mom and Peggy.

They may not recall each other’s names or know the intimate details of their life stories — or even grieve when the time comes, if one passes away before the other — yet every day a new world of friendship is born, and the delight they take in each other’s company is real.

Their memories may be failing, but their gifts of generosity, companionship and love of laughter endure.

Seeing them sitting side by side, I am grateful that this person has entered my mother’s life, and that they find comfort in each other.

It’s a beautiful thing.

Pam Frampton lives in St. John’s. Email pamelajframpton@gmail.com | X: @Pam_Frampton | Bluesky: @pamframpton.bsky.social