Mom's room mate was a woman about my mother's age, but very tiny and she was confined to a wheelchair. Well, she was supposed to be confined. Nursing homes aren't allowed to restrain residents with any sort of restraints that aren't included with the wheelchair. While hers had a seat belt, it opened at the front and she was more than capable of opening it herself. She too was an alzheimer sufferer but oddly enough, most of them can figure out how to do the things they really want to - like get out of the chair. She wore an alarm that would sound rather loudly when she tried to get out of the chair, and each time it went off my mother would yell out that she was getting awfully tired of that.
Not long before the dinner hour I prepared to leave, and one of the kitchen staff came for mom. This I thought was rather odd, but as it turns out, mom had volunteered to help out with kitchen duties. I wasn't surprised that she was interested in the kitchen, only that she had "volunteered". It was explained to me then that they try to find things that interest the residents, things they are still capable of doing, and things that make them feel useful. They had mom putting out the cutlery, buttering rolls and putting them in baskets and other similar duties.
That made some kind of sense to me. My mom had always been one of those women who excelled in the kitchen. She didn't cook "fancy food", just good old fashioned home cooking. But my mom was an experimental cook too. When she didn't have what she needed, she'd substitute, or make up something from a bunch of scraps that would have you asking for more. Her "macaroni and cheese" was anything but ordinary, the hot dog/fried onion/potato and tomato was a meal we couldn't get often enough, and the egg and pepper dish she created for my grandmother was an instant hit with the entire family. She was like that - she loved to cook, and to bake. And she was good at both. So putting her into an area like the kitchen, was a good choice, and it sparked her interest a little.
She would also go around to the tables after she'd eaten to see who needed help feeding themselves, so during meal times mom was involved enough in something that allowed to her to forget that she wasn't living in her own apartment.
So with mom having gone off to the kitchen, I slipped away to prepare dinner for my own family.