As I walk down the carpeted hall of the assisted living facility to visit my mother, I notice several new “welcome” signs hanging on the doors to other rooms. Residents have died and left a vacant room. There is always a waiting list. My mother’s door is ajar and I peek in. She’s on her couch watching TV. How small she looks, and how alone! I tap several times before finally walking in saying, “Hello--oo!” in that cheery voice we all use in such situations—the ones the nurses use upon entering to give her her pills. She turns to look. No expression. And then, like an iron that has been plugged in and slowly warming up, I see a puzzled look in her eyes, then a glimmer, a spark of recognition, and then she smiles. “So good to see you,” she says. She’s good at this game, my mother is. The one where she’s lost in time and place, but manages to fall back on social niceties, the right words, the right expressions, so that no one suspects she has no idea who sh...