He spoke to me pleasantly, but called me by the wrong name. He asked how I had been doing, how my health was. I stood up and shook his hand, smiled pleasantly, told him it was good to see him and told him I was well. Then I inquired as to his welfare, and he assured me he was well also.
The lady standing just behind and a bit to the side of him smiled at the exchange.
He looked to be in his 80s; he was using a walker, and I would be willing to bet he was in the military in his youth. They just have a way of carrying themselves, no matter how old they get.
It may have been Alzheimer’s or some other something that is robbing him of his memories and replacing them with things that are not real, but whatever it is, it convinced him, for a moment, that I was someone else.
As far as I know, I have never met the man in my life. The exchange did not take place in my hometown; it took place hundreds of miles away in the hotel lobby of a lovely mountain town where I was preaching a revival meeting. The fact that I do not know him was utterly irrelevant; at that moment, he needed me to assure him that my health was well, and to let him know that I cared about his.