Many people lost their minds during the pandemic.

My beloved mamie, my mum’s mother, certainly did—literally.

Oh, she never got into myths and conspiracy theories on vaccines and COVID-19—in fact, I’m not sure she understood what was going on in 2020 and 2021.

She knew about the virus, that’s for sure but she was still wondering why streets were so empty during the fucking lockdown. Dementia or denial? We couldn’t tell and frankly, it wasn’t the best timing to get a diagnosis. Besides, mamie has always been… ahem, very selective about reality.

 I remember talking to her on the phone during the first 2020 lockdown in France and she was pretty flippant about “the virus” because she had heard a lot about the 1918 Spanish flu when was a kid and well, we were all still here, right?

At one point, we had to make her understand that COVID-19 was a pretty big issue. I mean, her husband, my papi was in hospital after yet another small stroke and he had just tested positive for COVID, which is never great news when you’re 91 and very weak.

She was still her old self when visiting him every day at the hospital with my mum.

Then visits were banned.

She never got to see her husband again. My mum was able to go once last time a few hours before he died. She went with my brother and I’m thankful they did because I couldn’t stand the idea of my papi dying alone.

I’m pretty sure this is when things got worse.

My mum lives a few blocks away so she kept an eye on her but she was still working full-time so it was a challenge, especially when a COVID curfew was enforced, especially when the city was shutting down at 6 p.m. and my mum was only coming home at 7 p.m. Meanwhile, mamie stopped going out, so my mum did all the grocery shopping. Then she stopped cooking, stopped washing, stopped making sense.

Last year, we managed to convince her to accept a support worker, a lovely woman who would come for a couple of hours in the evening.

It wasn’t enough. Last September, she entered a long-term care facility.

My mum goes to see her several times a week, and so do I, now that I’m in France.

“Are we doing mamie alive or mamie‘s mess today?” I ask my mum because we’re also trying to clean her former apartment and sort out her stuff (a giant mess) and we usually don’t have the time to visit her and deal with chaos.

As I said, a (dark) sense of humour helps.

I call the facility “Wuthering Heights” because the actual name in French sounds like the name of Brontë’s novel in French; plus I think there’s as much drama going on here among residents as in the book. Regular old folks are on the ground floor, Alzheimer’s residents are on the first floor and rich old folks who can afford it are in fancy apartments on the third floor.

Mamie is on the first floor. At 93, she’s one of the oldest—at least that’s our guess because guess what, nobody is making sense on the first floor.

There’s Christine, who claims she is 75 and that she’s going home next week. “Next week” was when I first met her three weeks ago. Well, she’s still here and she’s probably not 75.

There’s Maurice, who constantly complains he is dying. My mum took him seriously the first and went to get the nurse, who burst out laughing—Maurice is fine, well, as fine as you can be at 80 or 90.

There’s Michel, who used to be a teacher and always talks about his time in Algeria during the war. He is very polite, very educated—but he is still an “Alzheimer’s resident” so we have no idea if what he says is true.

There’s “76-96,” a 76-year-old woman who has been spending every single afternoon with her 96-year-old mother for a least a decade. She clearly loves her mum but she is also clearly wondering how much longer she will have to take care of her after dedicating her life to her own now-grown-up kids.

There are dozens of residents wandering around, some of them complaining everybody is crazy around here, some of them looking very lonely and lost, some of them arguing because, after all, they didn’t choose to end up here with a bunch of strangers.

There’s a vending machine that either takes your 35 cents and doesn’t give anything OR spits out the worse coffee you’ve ever tasted.

When I step into the facility, I try to bring life and a sense of normalcy. This is the least I can do.

“What did you do today?” I’m still asking mamie, even though I know she didn’t do anything. I invariably ask about her sister, and she always replies she didn’t call because she went out shopping with friends—this was probably true at one point 60 years ago, but since her sister is 96, I doubt it. But whatever.

Yes, “whatever” is a key word. I don’t mind asking the same questions, hearing the same answers.

At least, we’re talking. At least, she recognizes me. At least, she’s safe here. At least, I’m here and she’s here.

And I’m happy when a handful of residents always hanging out close to the front door are laughing at me because once again, I enter the wrong code on the keypad and the door doesn’t open (the sign says “the code is the year backwards”, but it wasn’t changed to “2023”).

Hell, sometimes I do it on purpose just to make them laugh.