She studies my face. Her eyes are as green as ocean waves.
“It makes me feel less afraid,” she says.
“I know.” I nod, rocking my head softly.
She turns away, and I wait some more. She releases my hand and reaches for her water glass. It is on her nightstand, next to the medicine. She takes a sip.
“Is it a true story?” She sits up a little in her bed and takes another drink. Her body is still strong. “I mean, did you know these people?”
“Yes,” I say again. I could say more, but usually I don’t. She is still beautiful. She asks the obvious:
“Well, which one did she finally marry?”
I answer: “The one who was right for her.” “Which one was that?”
I smile. “You’ll know,” I say quietly, “by the end of the day. You’ll know.”
She does not know what to think about this but does not question me further. Instead she begins to fidget. She is thinking of a way to ask me another question, though she isn’t sure how to do it. Instead she chooses to put it off for a moment and reaches for one of the little paper cups.
“Is this mine?”
“No, this one is,” and I reach over and push her medicine toward her. I cannot grab it with my fingers. She takes it and looks at the pills. I can tell by the way she is looking at them that she has no idea what they are for. I use both hands to pick up my cup and dump the pills into my mouth. She does the same. There is no fight today. That makes it easy. I raise my cup in a mock toast and wash the gritty flavor from my mouth with my tea. It is getting colder. She swallows on faith and washes them down with more water.
A bird starts to sing outside the window, and we both turn our heads. We sit quietly for a while, enjoying something beautiful together. Then it is lost, and she sighs.
“I have to ask you something else,” she says. “Whatever it is, I’ll try to answer.”
“It’s hard, though.”
She does not look at me, and I cannot see her eyes. This is how she hides her thoughts. Some things never change.
“Take your time,” I say. I know what she will ask. Finally she turns to me and looks into my eyes. She offers a gentle smile, the kind you share with a child, not a lover.
“I don’t want to hurt your feelings because you’ve been so nice to me, but . . .”
I wait. Her words will hurt me. They will tear a piece from my heart and leave a scar.
“Who are you?”
We have lived at Creekside Extended Care Facility for three years now. It was her decision to come here, partly because it was near our home, but also because she thought it would be easier for me. We boarded up our home because neither of us could bear to sell it, signed some papers, and just like that we received a place to live and die in exchange for some of the freedom for which we had worked a lifetime.
She was right to do this, of course. There is no way I could have made it alone, for sickness has come to us, both of us. We are in the final minutes in the day of our lives, and the clock is ticking. Loudly. I wonder if I am the only one who can hear it.
A throbbing pain courses through my fingers, and it reminds me that we have not held hands with fingers interlocked since we moved here. I am sad about this, but it is my fault, not hers. It is arthritis in the worst form, rheumatoid and advanced. My hands are misshapen and grotesque now, and they throb during most of my waking hours. I look at them and want them gone, amputated, but then I would not be able to do the little things I must do. So I use my claws, as I call them sometimes, and every day I take her hands despite the pain, and I do my best to hold them because that is what she wants me to do.
Although the Bible says man can live to be 120, I don’t want to, and I don’t think my body would make it even if I did. It is falling apart, dying one piece at a time, steady erosion on the inside and at the joints. My hands are useless, my kidneys are beginning to fail, and my heart rate is decreasing every month. Worse, I have cancer again, this time of the prostate. This is my third bout with the unseen enemy, and it will take me eventually, though not till I say it is time. The doctors are worried about me, but I am not. I have no time for worry in this twilight of my life.
Of our five children, four are still living, and though it is hard for them to visit, they come often, and for this I am thankful. But even when they aren’t here, they come alive in my mind every day, each of them, and they bring to mind the smiles and tears that come with raising a family. A dozen pictures line the walls of my room. They are my heritage, my contribution to the world. I am very proud. Sometimes I wonder what my wife thinks of them as she dreams, or if she thinks of them at all, or if she even dreams. There is so much about her I don’t understand anymore.
I wonder what my daddy would think of my life and what he would do if he were me. I have not seen him for fifty years and he is now but a shadow in my thoughts. I cannot picture him clearly anymore; his face is darkened as if a light shines from behind him. I am not sure if this is due to a failing memory or simply the passage of time. I have only one picture of him, and this too has faded. In another ten years it will be gone and so will I, and his memory will be erased like a message in the sand. If not for my diaries, I would swear I had lived only half as long as I have. Long periods of my life seem to have vanished. And even now I read the passages and wonder who I was when I wrote them, for I cannot remember the events of my life. There are times I sit and wonder where it all has gone.
“My name,” I say, “is Duke.” I have always been a John Wayne fan.
“Duke,” she whispers to herself, “Duke.” She thinks for a moment, her forehead wrinkled, her eyes serious.
“Yes,” I say, “I’m here for you.” And always will be, I think to myself.
She flushes with my answer. Her eyes become wet and red, and tears begin to fall. My heart aches for her, and I wish for the thousandth time that there was something I could do. She says:
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand anything that’s happening to me right now. Even you. When I listen to you talk I feel like I should know you, but I don’t. I don’t even know my name.”
She wipes at her tears and says, “Help me, Duke, help me remember who I am. Or at least, who I was. I feel so lost.”
I answer from my heart, but I lie to her about her name. As I have about my own. There is a reason for this.
“You are Hannah, a lover of life, a strength to those who shared in your friendships. You are a dream, a creator of happiness, an artist who has touched a thousand souls. You’ve led a full life and wanted for nothing because your needs are spiritual and you have only to look inside you. You are kind and loyal, and you are able to see beauty where others do not. You are a teacher of wonderful lessons, a dreamer of better things.”
I stop for a moment and catch my breath. Then, “Hannah, there is no reason to feel lost, for:
Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,
No birth, identity, form—no object of the world,
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing; . . . The body, sluggish, aged, cold—the embers left from earlier fires,
. . . shall duly flame again;”
She thinks about what I have said for a moment. In the silence, I look toward the window and notice that the rain has stopped now. Sunlight is beginning to filter into her room. She asks:
“Did you write that?”
“No, that was Walt Whitman.” “Who?”
“A lover of words, a shaper of thoughts.”
She does not respond directly. Instead she stares at me for a long while, until our breathing coincides. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. Deep breaths. I wonder if she knows I think she’s beautiful.
“Would you stay with me a while?” she finally asks.
I smile and nod. She smiles back. She reaches for my hand, takes it gently, and pulls it to her waist. She stares at the hardened knots that deform my fingers and caresses them gently. Her hands are still those of an angel.
“Come,” I say as I stand with great effort, “let’s go for a walk. The air is crisp and the goslings are waiting. It’s beautiful today.” I am staring at her as I say these last few words.
She blushes. It makes me feel young again.
She was famous, of course. One of the best southern painters of the twentieth century, some said, and I was, and am, proud of her. Unlike me, who struggled to write even the simplest of verses, my wife could create beauty as easily as the Lord created the earth. Her paintings are in museums around the world, but I have kept only two for myself. The first one she ever gave me and the last one. They hang in my room, and late at night I sit and stare and sometimes cry when I look at them. I don’t know why.
And so the years passed. We led our lives, working, painting, raising children, loving each other. I see photos of Christmases, family trips, of graduations and of weddings. I see grandchildren and happy faces. I see photos of us, our hair growing whiter, the lines in our faces deeper. A lifetime that seems so typical, yet uncommon.
We could not foresee the future, but then who can? I do not live now as I expected to. And what did I expect? Retirement. Visits with the grandchildren, perhaps more travel. She always loved to travel. I thought that perhaps I would start a hobby, what I did not know, but possibly shipbuilding. In bottles. Small, detailed, impossible to consider now with my hands. But I am not bitter.
Our lives can’t be measured by our final years, of this I am sure, and I guess I should have known what lay ahead in our lives. Looking back, I suppose it seems obvious, but at first I thought her confusion understandable and not unique. She would forget where she placed her keys, but who has not done that? She would forget a neighbor’s name, but not someone we knew well or with whom we socialized. Sometimes she would write the wrong year when she made out her checks, but again I dismissed it as simple mistakes that one makes when thinking of other things.
It was not until the more obvious events occurred that I began to suspect the worst. An iron in the freezer, clothes in the dishwasher, books in the oven. Other things, too. But the day I found her in the car three blocks away, crying over the steering wheel because she couldn’t find her way home was the first day I was really frightened. And she was frightened, too, for when I tapped on her window, she turned to me and said, “Oh God, what’s happening to me? Please help me.” A knot twisted in my stomach, but I dared not think the worst.
Six days later the doctor met with her and began a series of tests. I did not understand them then and I do not understand them now, but I suppose it is because I am afraid to know. She spent almost an hour with Dr. Barnwell, and she went back the next day. That day was the longest day I ever spent. I looked through magazines I could not read and played games I did not think about. Finally he called us both into his office and sat us down. She held my arm confidently, but I remember clearly that my own hands were shaking.
“I’m so sorry to have to tell you this,” Dr. Barn-well began, “but you seem to be in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. . . .”
My mind went blank, and all I could think about was the light that glowed above our heads. The words echoed in my head:
the early stages of Alzheimer’s . . .
My world spun in circles, and I felt her grip tighten on my arm. She whispered, almost to herself: “Oh, Noah . . . Noah . . .”
And as the tears started to fall, the word came back to me again: . . .
Alzheimer’s
...
It is a barren disease, as empty and lifeless as a desert. It is a thief of hearts and souls and memories. I did not know what to say to her as she sobbed on my bosom, so I simply held her and rocked her back and forth.
The doctor was grim. He was a good man, and this was hard for him. He was younger than my youngest, and I felt my age in his presence. My mind was confused, my love was shaking, and the only thing I could think was:
No drowning man can know which drop of water his last breath did stop; . . .
A wise poet’s words, yet they brought me no comfort. I don’t know what they meant or why I thought of them.
We rocked to and fro, and Allie, my dream, my timeless beauty, told me she was sorry. I knew there was nothing to forgive, and I whispered in her ear. “Everything will be fine,” I whispered, but inside I was afraid. I was a hollow man with nothing to offer, empty as a junked stovepipe.
I remember only bits and pieces of Dr. Barnwell’s continuing explanation.
“It’s a degenerative brain disorder affecting memory and personality . . . there is no cure or therapy. . . .
There’s no way to tell how fast it will progress . . . it differs from person to person. ...I wish I knew more. . . .
Some days will be better than others. ...It will grow worse with the passage of time. . . . I’m sorry to be the one who has to tell you. . . .”
I’m sorry . . .
I’m sorry . . .
I’m sorry . . .
Everyone was sorry. My children were broken-hearted, my friends were scared for themselves. I don’t remember leaving the doctor’s office, and I don’t remember driving home. My memories of that day are gone, and in this my wife and I are the same.
It has been four years now. Since then we have made the best of it, if that is possible. Allie organized, as was her disposition. She made arrangements to leave the house and move here. She rewrote her will and sealed it. She left specific burial instructions, and they sit in my desk, in the bottom drawer. I have not seen them. And when she was finished, she began to write. Letters to friends and children. Letters to brothers and sisters and cousins. Letters to nieces, nephews, and neighbors. And a letter to me.
I read it sometimes when I am in the mood, and when I do, I am reminded of Allie on cold winter evenings, seated by a roaring fire with a glass of wine at her side, reading the letters I had written to her over the years. She kept them, these letters, and now I keep them, for she made me promise to do so. She said I would know what to do with them. She was right; I find I enjoy reading bits and pieces of them just as she used to. They intrigue me, these letters, for when I sift through them I realize that romance and passion are possible at any age. I see Allie now and know I’ve never loved her more, but as I read the letters, I come to understand that I have always felt the same way.