It's a real thing. She couldn't find the words, but she was telling a story that related to what you were talking about if Ukraine triggered a memory about potatoes.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/a-potato-battery-can-light-up-a-room-for-over-a-month-180948260/#:~:text=A%20couple%20years%20ago%2C%20researchers,power%20of%20a%20raw%20one.
And I'm so sorry, Glam. It's so hard and so frustrating to lose our parents by degrees. My mom has advanced Alzheimer's and at this point I would be thrilled to have any nonsense conversation with her where she could string more than a word or two into a sentence. It's heartbreaking.
She loves music so on days when she can't talk at all and I think she is having trouble following what I'm saying, I ask if she would like to listen to some jazz, which was always her favorite. She always says yes. She also seems to follow what I'm saying best when I talk about things that happened when I was a kid, about the pets we had when I was growing up. She lights up when I tell her I love her and that I'm having a good life because she got me off to a good start. If your mom has old letters or cards she saved from her past, you could try reading those to her, too. My dad died a few years ago and for a while she didn't remember he had died but knew he wasn't there anymore. She worried that he was in the hospital or that he had left her. When I read love letters he'd written to her in the late 50s when he was on college break and missing her, she believed he was away but ok and missing her as much as she missed him. It gave her comfort.
I hope you can find a way to reach her, and as so many others have said, be kind to yourself when you are frustrated and overwhelmed and having conflicting emotions. Despite how hard it is, you are doing what's best for her. You're doing great.
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