Several weeks ago, I received a phone call from an old Sweet Adeline friend––let’s call her Edna––whom I hadn’t seen in four years, since her 80th birthday party. We made arrangements to meet for lunch on the first day I was free, which was about two weeks later. (At 75, I have a schedule that would cripple a 30-year-old.) She said she wanted to eat at her favorite restaurant, Cracker Barrel.

I called her house the day before our luncheon engagement, just to make sure she remembered our date. It’s a good thing I did, because both she and her middle-aged daughter––who lives with her––had forgotten. When I picked up Edna at her house the next day to take her to lunch, her daughter motioned me to walk with her to the door.

She handed me an envelope and whispered some instructions. “There’s enough money in there to cover the cost of lunch, and a list of the foods that she likes to order. She wants tartar sauce with everything, and she doesn’t like a great deal of ice in her iced tea.”

I thought, Who’s the mom here? But I simply smiled, thanked her, and took the envelope.

Edna and I were surprised to see the parking lot at the restaurant totally filled. My friend said, “My daughter likes to park under a tree. It keeps the car from getting so hot.”

“Well, I plan to park in the first vacant spot I can find, tree or no tree.” I found one––and only one. “There seem to be a lot of people who want to eat at Cracker Barrel today.”

As we approached the front porch that spans the entire front of the restaurant, we could see that all of the rockers on the porch were filled with people, fanning themselves in an attempt to withstand the midday heat of an Arizona September day. Inside, the crowd waiting in line filled the lobby retail store that sold everything from baby clothes to bone china.

Edna remarked, “What day is this, anyway? It’s as busy as Sunday after church.”

“Well, it’s Monday,” I said, “but it is Labor Day, so I guess people are celebrating the day off from work by letting the folks at Cracker Barrel do the cooking.”

After a fifteen-minute wait, we were told that our table was ready. As we walked through the crowded restaurant toward our table, Edna seemed to know all of the people who worked there, greeting them and stopping to chat. I did recall that it was her favorite restaurant, and that her daughter had told me it was the only restaurant she would frequent.

I began to realize something might be wrong when Edna asked me just after we were seated, “What day is this?” Again, I explained that it was a holiday, and that was probably the reason the place was so crowded. We tried to chat, but it was incredibly noisy in the restaurant, and my friend’s voice was so soft that conversation was almost impossible. What I heard from her, combined with my memory of her daughter’s “instructions,” gave me concern. She seemed to repeat herself often.

When we had finished eating, I suggested, “You’ve never been to my house, have you? I could show you a video of my quartet’s performance this past spring at the Tip Top Variety Show, and we can have a real conversation––and hear each other.” Edna said she’d love to, so we escaped the noise chamber and drove to my place.

It was fun showing my friend my house, all my quartet and chorus pictures, and chatting about the performances we had enjoyed together. However, I began to notice that she was repeating the same stories. When she said she was married at age 18 in 1989. I did a quick calculation, and realized she was off by 40 years. That could be a natural mistake, but I noticed other disturbing errors.

She kept saying that her knee replacement still hurt so much that she couldn’t kneel in church (she’s a Catholic) and her daughter wouldn’t take her back to the doctor who did the surgery. I said, “That reminds me of the old joke, when the man says, ‘Doctor, it hurts when I do this,’ and the doctor says, ‘Then don’t do that.’ I think God will understand and forgive you for not kneeling.” But she couldn’t seem to accept the logic of that, and kept repeating that she didn’t remember the name of the doctor.

I really began to be concerned when Edna told me that her daughter was taking money from her bank account and giving it to her own children. What could I do? Was this true? Was my friend the victim of elder abuse? Or was this story a product of advancing dementia? She seemed to forget the everyday things most of us remember, but she could remember the words to lyrics and poems she had once written. I recorded her as she recited some of her poetry into my computer so they wouldn’t be lost forever.

I don’t know what to do, or whether I should do anything. I miss the friend I once knew and the singing we used to do together.