another one

Yesterday a family friend called.

His wife, his voice quivered, he was afraid, she did not act right, he was sure, she had some early dementia.

We know both him and his wife quite well and he may well be right.

That does not make it any easier.

He is more than a decade older than she. They have no children together. His health is quite good, but she worries and worries that if something happens to him she will be all alone.

Like my Miriam, she had been fired from her job, a job she dearly loved and had worked at for more than twenty five years. That loss haunted her. And it is more than just the loss it is the humiliation of knowing that in some way she failed. We do not take to failure easily.

“Who can take care of me,” she worries.

Of course I had no magic words I could not tell him that if she took a fancy medicine she would get better. I could give him some guidance about how he can cope, how he can be better for and to her.

Our paths will cross soon and we will sit down for a visit. They don’t live close and we don’t see them often. She does some internet, he does not. So, like my friends Ron and Roz, they are quite isolated from all of the companionship and information that the internet can provide.

The only good thing I could tell him is that at the first stages she will worry and fuss about herself and what is going on, but that will pass and she will be happier in many ways, maybe happier than she has been in along time.

One of my daughters is doing a painted portrait of Miriam. It shows Miriam with her dignity in tact, with a quizzical expression looking at the viewer. The words on the bottom of the painting set the mood. “Free at last.”

I am not ready for that painting yet, though I admire it a lot. Miriam’s maybe at last free of her fears, but the term also refers to the end of our life together, and I do not want to dwell on that.

It is a horrible disease.