The morning after the event, I put my mom on a plane at 6:00am and by 8:00am my sister had picked her up from the airport and gotten her to an appointment at Ford Hospital, an island in a sea of decayed, abandoned buildings in downtown Detroit. The doctor brought my mom out after his exam to report to my sister with great alarm that he had asked her the standard question, “Do you know who is President of the United States?” to which my mom quickly and cheerfully responded, “Yes, Bill Clinton. I had dinner with him last night.” The doctor, stunned at my mom’s cognitive decline, asked her where this took place and if anyone else was present. “Oh, at the White House, and yes, Elizabeth Taylor was there with her dog.” My mom went on to tell him about all the other stars in attendance as the doctor sadly shook his head and looked out at the wasteland outside his window, wondering at her vibrant imagination in such a dismal setting.
When the doctor brought my mother out to my sister in the waiting room, he declared, “Your mother not only has dementia; she has illusions of grandeur. She believes she had dinner at the White House last night with Muhammad Ali and Elizabeth Taylor.” When my sister assured him that this was true, he retorted that obviously our mother’s fantasies were a shared psychosis.
