Landscapes
“thank you”
That’s all she said, I could finally see a knowing look in her dark brown eyes after 6 long weeks. It was nice, great even, but I didn’t run to call the doctors just yet. I wanted, no, I needed this moment with her. It’s really been something.
I first noticed the changes two weeks after we had returned from our couples’ retreat in Bali. We needed it, work had been hectic for the both of us. No kids in the picture, so there was some calm at home for now. Some nights she’d wake up, calling out to her father which I dismissed as a grieving process. Her parents separated when she was ten, she didn’t get much contact with him afterwards only to realize some years later he had passed on due to a “brain sickness” they called it. I guess she finally started to miss him after all these years. Grief works in mysterious ways.
The night she broke down crying in search of him around the house was the night we finally went to a hospital. It rained heavily and the thunderstorms animated the whole episode, creating a cinematic experience I do not want to re-watch yet I am plagued by. The familiarity in her eyes when she looked at me was lost, all she saw was a stranger she could ask frantically where her dad was. The hyperventilation, the tantrum, the emotions, a perfect blend to transform who I knew as my wife into a child abandoned at the park.
After a series of tests, questions and involvement of her family and a detailed investigation into her father’s cause of death, she was diagnosed of dementia. It was hereditary and bound to get worse. There was no cure but a certain percentage of people got better, but others didn’t, never said but implied. The stress of work triggered its early onset, they said. They said a lot of things that night that seemed to drag on for days. A lot of things I can’t recall, there were so many questions in my head that drowned out all they said. Eventually we checked her into a center.
Visiting her everyday wasn’t the hard part, telling her I hadn’t found her dad was. They said I had to play along, that it helped. I hadn’t visited a church since I left Nigeria, I was desperate, I went for evening mass daily after I had seen her and assured her I’d keep searching for him. Talked to the priest too, it helped to ease the burden that was still so heavy. Her mom couldn’t come around often because of her age and the grief (she never mentioned, but my grief could sense hers).
It was a Tuesday afternoon when I walked into her room at the center, she was facing the window, she loved landscapes, obsessed even, but had stopped her ritual of observing them shortly before our trip. I started rolling out my usual lines as I sat at the corner of her bed about the ongoing search for her dad when she turned and hugged me. It felt warm, different, or maybe I was tired and needed one for the longest time. She pulled back, looked at me and said those words. For the first time in a long time, I called out ‘teddy’ and she responded with a glow in her eyes. I wasn’t sure whose tears drenched my sleeve, but that was a moment. It was. They said she was still under observation to confirm we were out of the tunnel. They. It was all I needed to spark the glowing splint of hope I had. I called her mom, we planned the next convenient time to see her together, we planned a party to welcome her, we organized therapy sessions, we did all but slow down.
She passed on two days later in her sleep. They said she had a smile on her face, she looked immaculate, that she seemed at peace. She, Catherine.
I haven’t said her name since the funeral and it’s been six months. I don’t know if it’s out of fear of wearing it down, or the grief that would follow. But I’m always in grief, that hasn’t changed.
Catherine.
For all those living with dementia and Alzheimer’s.
