Christmas with Terri

Mum and I have been extremely worried about our friend Terri over the past several years. Her health has been in decline and her short term memory is coming close to non-existent. She'll call and we will talk for a bit and then a half hour later she'll call again, having completely forgotten our previous chat. We have plans to hang out but she won't remember to look back at our texts and instead she will call every other day to ask when we are getting together. This month alone we had over twelve calls and texts where I reminded her again and again of the date, time, and what we were doing. Today I waited for her to phone me when she got in from work so I could pick her up. Finally, after two texts went unnoticed, I called her. "Do we have plans today?" was her reply. Scary. Very scary. Luckily she was available and I went to get her, since she can't drive anymore. We got to Mama Rose's place and wound up having a really good time. I made sure that everything was gluten free - quiche, chocolate silk pie, cookies, and fruit with chocolate hummus dip. All yummy! We went through the Debatable Holiday Edition questions, reminisced, talked about our fave Hallmark Christmas movies, past and present, and I managed to film her for a bit. I've been collecting mini-videos where I ask friends and family questions and get their responses, à la 306 Hollywood. I asked her about her kids, her Dad, grandmother, and her first car, Tank. Terri's long term memory is still sharp and I'm glad I was able to make her smile while she thought back on so many happy moments. Rose and I fear that this will be our last Christmas with Terri as we can't see her getting any better, so we wanted to make it special for her. Naturally we ended the evening with selfies in the living room. Hopefully we are wrong and Terri will miraculously improve, but if she doesn't, I'm glad we got together and celebrated our friendship with food and laughter.