Mini-Mental State Examination

Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

They were more like the scratches of a mother hen in the loose soil, the barely legible scrawl of her scrawny hand. She had taken the piece of paper out of my hand in response to a question I had just asked and the ball-point in her small hand quivered as she held on to it, a little too tightly.

This lovely eighty-something year old lady was gaunt and unkempt, her tousled silver-gray hair framing a pale and wrinkled face with jutting cheek bones. It was clear to anyone who cared to look that she had once upon a time been quite the stunner. Her beautifully angled face would most certainly have turned a few heads in her day. Her arms must have been strong and her feet nimble. But those days were far long gone. And today, while she sat with me, in a hospital bed, I wondered how much of her life gone by she could remember. Not very much, I presume. Because the reason I was sat there, interviewing her with a string of statements I had prefaced as “silly questions”, was that the Consultant, on the rounds the day before had described her as “increasingly confused.”

I was given the rather pleasant task of conducting a mini-mental state examination on this lady in order to, if you will allow it, find out just how with it she really was. “Do you know where you are now?”, “What month of the year is it?” I asked her in turn.

She would score a respectable eleven out of thirty, but she got full marks for her response to my question, “would you please write a sentence for me? Any sentence will do.” As she took the pen from my hand and began to write I honestly did not expect her to come up with anything. What a pleasant surprise, then, when I noticed she was trying her darnedest to make out a letter “T”. Well now, I thought, perhaps there is something to hope for - a little comprehension to hang onto.

Next came an “h”. What now? Hmmm... Perhaps “The quick brown fox...?”

But then, “a”, each letter taking five or more seconds to carve out, her handwriting more like a chisel in granite than an ink pen on paper.

“T-h-a-n-k ...” It was by now obvious where this was going, but as I smiled, I let her finish. It might take me five minutes to get this sentence out of her but I would let her speak her piece.

In the end the words, “Thank you very much” had been not so much written as cajoled out of the pen but how very pleased I was. Not so much that her gratitude was towards me, indeed it most likely was not because I had done nothing deserving of thanks, but that her “any” sentence would be one of thankfulness. What did she have to be grateful for? Her beauty had been taken from her. And then her strength. And even now, in the twilight of her days, she could feel her very life ebbing away. But as ever, the one phrase she could muster was “thank you very much.”

I smiled as I took the paper and pen from her hands and leant in close to whisper to her, “No, Thank You.” She had given me a gift because I had caught a glimpse of joy within her suffering body, of beauty yet residing within, of gratefulness for a full life even when that life was at its end.

Indeed, everyday, in every moment, there’s always a reason to say thanks. Look around you now and see what God has done for you. And then say “Thank you very much”.

With love, Doosuur