The title of the actress Phyllida Law's book refers to a question that dementia specialists put to their patients to help determine whether they have Alzheimer's. Law spent two years caring for her nonagenarian mother, Mego, in the tiny Scottish village of Ardentinny, with occasional help from friends, fellow villagers, and her daughter, the actresses Emma and Sophie Thompson. Mego's memory was already failing when her husband Arthur died. She had been known to put her shoes in the oven and bacon in her sock drawer. Now she was brushing her teeth with shampoo and trying to exit a room via the window rather than the door. "Mother was lost," says Law.
