Open Writing

I emerge through the dawn shadows listening to the distant chortle of the kookaburras. Sleep eludes me yet again; he moans with guttural sounds as he does during daylight hours. I rise in silence and gaze in the bathroom mirror. My whitened hair is askew and matches some of the eyebrow hair. I am so in need of a haircut. Bewildered blue eyes peer in disbelief. The bruised shadows under my eyes reflect the turmoil of inner grief. The skin of my face is taut and tense and yet still with few lines. Who am I? How am I? What will today bring?

Familiar sands have shifted under my feet and been re-sifted. Across the unrelenting passage of time since he was diagnosed my life has narrowed and become confined. Twelve short months has redefined our existence and altered it like a migratory bird unable to return, circling eternally.

Where did that woman of strength, with such a strong sense of survival through any crisis, shrink to? The one who laughed a lot but now seldom smiles. Shapes of memory, when life had a vibrant blending of colour, bleed from her. The walls of her cottage contain her and him and communication has fled. Social outings are rare and treasured. Friends who come for coffee uplift her and yet afterwards she is drained but hopes they come back soon. Family are either supportive or practice avoidance at any cost and so she retreats as well. Her talents and skills no longer dwell inside her soul. Emotions range from anger, frustration or fear to a wellspring of sadness, loss and she clings with gritted teeth to leaded stones of patience. She has not, nor cannot, cry. Tears are frozen and unshed. Crucial decisions are now hers alone. Intimacy, affection and conversation with him have disappeared like the passing of each midnight.

His feet have their own rhythm to the beat of walking and pacing. In the supermarket aisles he dances to the internal music and I cringe, yet long to join him. We used to dance as one, especially during our courting, like two mating wood pigeons circling one another across a Hills hoist clothesline. We danced together for forty-five years. A waltz of immense tribulations in step with the music of exaltation and joy. Shared tears and gut-wrenching heartaches as we swam with the tides of time, such raw scars, some unhealed, some sacred and precious.

We no longer dance as one. He has a different tango. A different tune.

Days are difficult, sometimes hilarious as he slips away from us in the daily dose of memory deterioration. Yesterday he tried to clean his teeth with my liquid make-up.

We laughed hard. He picks up his mother’s photo and kisses it. He thinks she still lives. Who are these children he wonders? They are his beloved grandchildren from age five to adult.

He giggles and tries to play with little children but often mothers yank them away from him. He used to paint stunning oil paintings and read books prolifically but now his canvas is blank. His horizons know neither book nor paintbrush.

I take him for walks through the forest and hold his arm as we stand in serenity gazing across a silvered lake. I take him for coffee at a café where I linger over mine and watch him stride up and down the sidewalk. People react at his verbal and loud grunts but I shrug it off. We trudge across sea soaked sands and I show him spiral shells. We swallow forbidden ice-cream. We drive to the country often.

'Oooh, cows!' he shouts every time we pass cattle in fields.

I point out the orchid-shaped wildflowers that wave in the breeze. I see them but he does not. He never forgets to kiss my cheek as he goes to bed but he forgets my name.

I’m cheeky to him.

'You funny woman,' he says and laughs aloud.

I treasure these time as I build up memories because soon we will be separated as a future place in a nursing care home looms.

So where did she go, that woman? Who did she become?

She left herself behind, just for a while. Putting aside a social and creative lifestyle to stand beside her husband.

In sickness and in health until time to part.
To love, honour and endure.

Why?

Because he has a condition that is severe and rapid.

One that steals memory and denies normality.

He has dementia.

**

Colleen writes for Bonzer! magazine. Please visit www.bonzer.org.au