I wondered earlier if Elena would accept a ride from someone. She could be anywhere with no idea how to make contact with her family, even if she could. I mention this because I discovered this evening that an older woman accepting a ride from a stranger is not far-fetched.
My very dear husband, who is nicer than I am about doing these things, called up a widowed friend of ours, about 71, just to see how she’s doing. She’s in good shape and walks all over our small town. She told him, as if it was totally normal, that a man in a car with out-of-state plates pulled up next to her as she walked down her fairly steep residential street a few blocks from Main and asked if she needed a ride. She accepted!!! She was just going a few blocks to the library and he dropped her off, thankfully. She didn’t mention anyone else being in the car.
My husband just listened and didn’t react. When he told me, I screeched “She did what??!!” After I recovered, I begged him to call her soon and tell her that we had been thinking about how dangerous this was. If the man had bad intentions, she could have been long gone before any of us would have realized it. Not only would this be awful for her, but it would put her friends here and her brother in another country thru h-ll. My dh is not someone to rock the boat, but he agreed to do it. Better him than me! I’d screech at her!
To my knowledge, she does not have early dementia, but she has always had a rather childish, self-involved way about her, even though she handles her life well enough. This really shook me up and I thought of Elena immediately.
