"A Worn Path"

This story is about an old woman who walked a long journey to get medicine for her grandson.

After reading the story through, I had a difficult time understanding the beginning of the story. I'm trying to figure out what the symbolism is exactly of her clothing and everything around her. The author spent all the time in the first part of the story explaining exact details of her cloths, her hair and all the setting of the story. What exactly was the purpose of this? How did this contribute to the ending of the story of her forgetting why she walked all that long way.

I found it a little frightening that after all that time and walking that she did, when she got to the doctor, she couldn't remember why she had come. Being that both my grandmothers suffer from dementia/alzheimer's, it was a scary reality that things like that happen. That someone can journey for such a long time and not remember why they did it.