Jo Dereske

ALL OF US AT THE SAME TIME

©Jo Dereske 2014

Chapter 28

Note: This is the final chapter of ALL OF US AT THE SAME TIME. It’s hard to believe it's been six months since I began posting a chapter every Tuesday.
Nearly 3,000 of you have read these chapters. I’m deeply grateful for your many generous comments and shared stories. In one way or another, dementia touches all of us.
ALL OF US AT THE SAME TIME, slightly expanded, will be available as an ebook in November, 2014. I’ll remove these chapters during that time. Again, thank you, jo

After

With shocking swiftness, our lives returned to normal in Washington. We slid back into our routines, stunned at the ease of the transition, as if it should have been impossible to inhabit our old daily lives again, as if our year in Michigan would have marked us too deeply.

It was a giddy relief to see my children, to leave our house for dinner, a movie, or to visit with friends without worrying what was happening “across the driveway.” I relished the freedom, cherishing moments that were my own, thrilling at the simple act of making plans.

Yet, Louise shadowed my thoughts: was she comfortable, healthy? Was someone making her green tea? Was the nursing home staff treating her well, appreciating her sharp humor? I knew her too well to wonder if she was happy.

Ray and Barbara kept us apprised of Louise’s progress. Her memory continued to falter; she frequently obsessed over money. Where was Mike, when could she go home, and just exactly where was she? She sometimes turned on Ray, enraged he wouldn’t simply help her into his car and give her a ride home. She was perfectly capable of taking care of herself; who did he think he was?

Once, she managed to slip out of the nursing home and begin the fifteen-mile walk back to the farm. Frantic staff members found her resolutely marching along the busy highway a mile from the building, telling them, “You’re going to make me finish my sentence, aren’t you?” before surrendering and allowing them to assist her into the car for the return trip to the nursing home.

In between these sad moments, she appeared to live at peace: making friends, having her hair done, joking with nurses, and always, always, eager to pass judgment on the food.

I sent her cards and photos and small gifts, the occasional naughty card, which my brother said she most appreciated. Never flowers. She’d refused to allow cut flowers in her house, tersely saying, “They’re dead,” and demanding they be removed.

I telephoned her, but only once. She asked several times, “Now who is this again?” It was too confusing for her, and she’d never been one to enjoy phone chats, anyway. “I need to see a face,” she’d told me often enough.

The realization that the only way we could speak together again was to make the 2,500-mile trip back to Michigan caused so much sorrow that I found myself pulling out the diary I’d kept in order to enjoy a mental visit. The diary was a tumultuous read – over 400 single-spaced pages – often written several times a day, on my computer. It had been my solace, a safe place to vent my frustrations, sorrow, and anger, and of course the triumphs and happiness, the changing seasons. The diary documented an even wilder roller coaster than I remembered.

I read portions of the diary aloud to Kipling, and we often ended in silence, shaking our heads over our naivete, and yes, admiration for our family’s valiant efforts to help Louise and Mike. Also pride in what we’d all struggled to accomplish because we loved them.

Had our intervention made a difference? It no longer mattered. As Susan had often said: moments, not memories, and there had been a treasure of golden moments. Our mistakes were tempered by the strength of our good intent. We’d gone to the boundaries of our ability and then, with the help of others, discovered we could go even further. Watching Louise and Mike, we’d witnessed indomitable love, and how it could remain a permanent component of the heart, untouched by age and dementia.

I never forgot that Kipling and I were an exception, able to give a year, to buttress each other, to have family to support us, and also to support Louise and Mike, or even that Louise and Mike had each other. We weren’t alone, as so many other caregivers were, running up against limited and heart-breaking options for their loved ones with dementia.

My mother’s cancer metastasized, and as Louise had noted in a mixture of irritation and awe, she never complained, leaving us unaware of how grave her health had become. My sister and I brought her from California where she was still assisting her own mother, to Washington, where she stayed with me during a series of tests. She was still hopeful and determined when a bronchoscopy lung test went horribly wrong and she was hospitalized, her life in imminent danger.

My brothers and sister arrived and we kept vigil at the hospital. During the only time we left her alone for a few moments, she quietly died.

After our hospital vigil and a breakfast together, we all returned to our house, stunned and grieving. Within moments, the phone rang. It was Barbara, reporting that Louise had also just unexpectedly died.

Their obituaries were printed in the same column in our local Michigan newspaper. Our mother’s first, June Zemke Dereske, followed by our aunt’s: Louise Dereske Zukas, I wondered what they would have made of that.

Louise had requested no funeral, but our mother had planned a funeral mass in Michigan and burial next to our father, so we held two Catholic funeral masses in Michigan, a day apart. The timing of their deaths caused much comment and bemusement. More than once at the VFW Auxiliary-hosted luncheon afterward, we heard someone say, “Those two,” in between shaking heads and engaging in the Midwest passion for telling stories of the lives of the dead.

A few years after our sojourn in Michigan, Kipling developed a persistent backache and was diagnosed with colon cancer. He died in our home at the age of forty-nine.

Morris the cat was unsuccessfully adopted and reappeared at the farm a few weeks later, but from then on kept his distance from people. Ray replenished an open bag of cat food in the garage for him. For years Morris would appear and disappear until people were unsure whether they were seeing Morris or one of his progeny.

Thieves pried out the coins and valuables that Louise had cemented into her stone patio, and the antique glass she’d left in the yard slowly disappeared.

But the farm and the land remained, each season laying its changes on the flora and fauna that thrived there, a constancy, while the lives that had shaped and been touched by it, passed through.


Life can’t be lived without hurt, though I try to cover the bad memories with good.
Louise Read More 

ALL OF US AT THE SAME TIME

©Jo Dereske 2014

Chapter 27

Fate Intervenes

The calendar year wound toward its end, and not only did our departure loom, but so did Louise and Mike’s move from the farm into a care home. Ray and Barbara had investigated nursing homes and made arrangements for their transition to a small, well-staffed facility with an excellent reputation to be as painless as possible, although we all accepted it would be anything but.

We strategized the logistics of their move, tried to prepare ourselves for the approaching upheaval. It was going to be a treacherous journey and every aspect of it was weighted with dread. There weren’t enough words we could tell ourselves to make it any easier.

But as frequently happens, when an ending is superficially imposed, Fate steps in and provides another ending. As if by stating your plans, you’ve invited the world take it out of your hands.

In the morning, as I poured Mike a cup of coffee, he sneezed. At lunch, I noticed his face had developed ruddy spots high on his cheekbones. He wouldn’t let me take his temperature, but I felt his forehead and confirmed he was feverish. He hadn’t been off the farm for three weeks, so we knew either one of us or one of the social services people had brought him a contagious illness. Louise was fine and so far, so were Kipling and I.

Mike had always been healthy – I couldn’t recall seeing him with a cold or sniffles. Mysteriously, his fever appeared to clarify his mind. For one long joyous day, despite his fever and a deepening huskiness in his voice, he was tender with Louise, calling her “Weezie,” responding to her conversation, and speaking in simple but coherent sentences. It was a small beacon of light.

But that night, I was awakened from a dozey sleep by Louise’s distressed voice over the intercom shouting “Operator, operator. Send an ambulance. I need help.”  Read More 

ALL OF US AT THE SAME TIME

c Jo Dereske 2014

Chapter 26

Drawing In

All that lingered in the vegetable garden were a few still-viable cold-weather plants: brussel sprouts, carrots. We’d suffered our first frost and a single pumpkin vine, its leaves limp and some blackened, still nourished four decent-sized and nearly orange pumpkins. Kipling dug and cleared away the dead and dying plants, piling them beside the garden in a makeshift compost pile. Would there be a garden next spring? If so, it wouldn’t be planted by us.

Two lawn chairs sat side by side at the end of the garden for Mike and Louise to sit and watch. Tending to the garden or caring what happened on the farm had slipped away from Mike. He was most attentive to movement now, it didn’t matter the source, even running water, a flapping towel on a clothes line, a passing car. Except for sudden, unexpected flights into fluency, he rarely initiated or responded to conversation, and then haltingly in simple English or even in Lithuanian. Sometimes Kipling built a bonfire near the garden and Mike stared into it so intently he rarely blinked. On good days, Louise pulled her chair closer to Mike’s and held his hand.


I showed Louise a photo in the newspaper of a local women’s group, knowing she was acquainted with several of the women, and had known them since they were young.

But one of the women in the photo reminded her of a relative who’d visited her in Chicago and whom she suspected of stealing her best black silk slip. Read More 

ALL OF US AT THE SAME TIME

©Jo Dereske 2014

Chapter 25

Seasons

We were gifted with a week of Indian summer, just when we believed we were about to descend into rainy fall weather. The ground crunched with dried leaves that sent up earthy fragrances. Urgency filled the air. Spiders burrowed into the dirt and invaded the house, seeming to spin new webs within seconds of brushing away existing webs.

Along the prairie portion of my trail I frequently came across the trails of box turtles making their sluggish way toward the creek. They pushed fallen leaves ahead of them like snow plows and when the piles grew too large to push any farther, Read More 

ALL OF US AT THE SAME TIME

©Jo Dereske 2014

Chapter 24

The Revolt

With Louise so weak and teetering on the outer edge of her life, we returned to the little house to prepare a brothy chicken soup for dinner, debating whether to call relatives for what might be a final visit with Louise, when Kipling suddenly said, surprise lifting his voice, “Take a look at this.”

I looked out the window. Louise, fully dressed, sat on her patio in her metal chair, her bare feet up on the rock tree ring. She’d been living in her nightgown and robe for days and the fact that she could summon the energy to dress herself had seemed impossible that morning. We were astounded and thrilled and rushed outside to greet her.

"Who's paying my bills?" Aunt Louise demanded as soon as I stepped onto the patio.

"Ray is," I told her, my smile still wide at this beautiful vision of her up and dressed and apparently recovering. It was miraculous. We were overjoyed. "You gave him power of attorney so he could pay all your bills for you," I explained as I had so many times. I felt jubilant, teary-eyed.

"Well, I'm well now. Nobody needs to have control over my money except me."

"You're still the boss," I assured her. "Ray only does what you tell him to."

"I want control over my own money."

We talked it through again Read More 

ALL OF US AT THE SAME TIME

©Jo Dereske 2014

Chapter 23

Realities

The very next morning after Louise’s comment that life was more interesting because you knew you had to die, I fixed their coffee and left notes while they slept, as usual, then returned to the little house to work on my computer in my corner of the entry.

I looked out the window at ten, about the time I usually returned to their house, to discover Mike shuffling up and down the driveway, wringing his hands and talking to himself. I ran outside and caught up with him, matching his steps. He couldn’t express what was upsetting him, but jerkily waved toward the house, gasping as if his chest were too shallow for deep breaths. I hurried into their house, fearing the worse, Mike at my heels.

On the sleeping porch, Louise still lay in bed, eyes closed. She hadn’t got up for coffee or breakfast. Her breathing was slow and peaceful, a sleeping woman’s even inhalations. I felt her forehead. No fever. She grunted when I asked her if she’d like coffee and I let her sleep, surmising she’d had a restless night.

She barely slitted her eyes when Meals on Wheels arrived. At twelve-thirty when I tried to wake her she mumbled, “I’ll get up soon,” the same at one and one-thirty. She lay peacefully on her back, not moving. Mike paced the house. "What the hell's wrong?" he blurted, rubbing his hands together, rocking himself in obvious fear, before slipping into incoherency.

Kipling had gone to town, so at two-thirty with Louise still lying in bed, I phoned Ray. He arrived in ten minutes and tried to wake her up but she opened her eyes enough to recognize him, smiled, and immediately resumed sleeping. What should we do? We'd talked about this possibility, of letting her slip away. Was that what was happening?

But it was so against human impulse, to stand idly by. At three-thirty, when Louise still hadn’t risen from her bed, Ray called Barbara at work and she arrived with all her nursing knowledge. Louise's pulse was barely forty. Where Ray and I had failed, Barbara was able to get her up and out of bed. Louise was confused and husky-voiced – and ravenous. “I enjoy my food,” she commented between bites of leftover lasagna.

By evening she was herself but we were all rattled. Louise was adamantly opposed to any kind of heroic efforts; years ago she’d had her lawyer draw up a living will, and had clearly expressed her desire to die at home. But could we stand by if she was in pain, unconscious? Just observing? At what point did we take her to the hospital, if at all?

I called the doctor and explained her deep sleep, the low pulse. “Bring her in,” he told me.

She refused – no surprise, promising to go “tomorrow.” She was aware that "something" had gone on so I described again her deep sleep and low blood pressure.

"What would you like us to do if that happens again, Aunt Louise," I asked. "Should we call the ambulance or the doctor?" I knew her wishes would countermand any living will.

She thought for the flash of a second. "Call the undertaker."

While I fixed her a cup of green tea she said, “It’s nothing to die. I watched my husband die. You just close your eyes and click, you’re gone.”

I was intrigued. A story I didn’t know. I opened my mouth to ask more and saw the warning on her face. Let it rest.

Mike was still agitated and had a renewed distrust of us, connecting our presence with Louise being ill. At lunch, the door was locked but when I returned a second time, Mike stood in the open doorway, smiling. Of course, I did have a plate of just-baked peanut butter cookies in my hand.


1932 A horrible letter from Billy. He found out. I’m glad I was good in many ways and didn’t go too far. I’m a jackass and no more of that for me, I promise!


Again the next morning, we couldn't wake up Louise. I took her pulse and found it once more hovering near forty. I forced her to sit up which she reluctantly did and then I led her by the hand to the kitchen. At first she was groggy and confused but after a half hour became happy, even slightly manic.

"I had a dream that wore me out," she told me. "I dreamed I was back on the farm washing clothes under the big maple and I wanted to quit but Mother kept bringing out more clothes for me to wash so I had to keep going."

I felt chills at the back of my neck.

The nurse, Roberta, stopped by before Louise's was due at the doctor’s. We’d planned Roberta’s visit as a maneuver in our battle plan to “encourage” Louise to keep the appointment. When she was reminded of the impending visit, Louise cried and declared she wouldn't go, she'd never go; doctor’s visits were “an intrusion,” and the nurse was “a nuisance.” She believed it was nighttime and no one had brought her any food; we were “starving” her.

Roberta calmly agreed with Louise, took her vital signs, and phoned Doctor Hoffer. He wanted blood tests and scheduled an EKG. Her pulse was 48, her blood pressure high. "If this keeps up she'll probably slip away in her sleep," the nurse told me in an aside.

Louise endured the tests as if she were a sleepwalker. The EKG showed that the only option was open heart surgery, which Doctor Hoffer felt Louise couldn't survive. A pacemaker wouldn't help. "It probably won't be long," he said. "Six months would be optimistic, definitely not a year. Make her as comfortable and peaceful as possible. Let her sleep all day if she wants. She's earned the right."

To Louise, Doctor Hoffer, who’d once coolly asked her if she knew who he was, said, with great generosity and warmth as he held her hands in both of his and gazed into her eyes, "Louise, you have a sick heart. I want you to relax and take it easy."

"Well, what else can I do?" she retorted.


1932 Billy found us two rooms on East 62nd Street and I came back to Chicago. It’s April 1 and Billy hasn’t worked one day this year, not real work. I get so nervous worrying.


When Ray talked to Louise’s lawyer about her weakening situation, he advised Ray to make Louise’s funeral arrangements. Funeral arrangements! It was a hard reality but he and I dutifully consulted the funeral director at the chapel from which three generations of our family had been buried. Louise had directed in her will that there be no funeral service. Plus, she wanted to be cremated. Neither of us could recall a single dead relative who’d skipped out of a funeral or been cremated. Viewing nights, rosaries, funeral masses, cemeteries, tombstones,; it was all part of the only package we knew.

The funeral director knew our family and inquired after our brother, our cousins. “I remember your father on that fancy motorcycle of his.” He gently led us through the complex formalities of death, existing even without a cremation or funeral. A kind of numbness settled over us. We planned, saying the words, making the necessary decisions; all the while I imagined Louise fuming over what we were doing.

From memory the director described the style of tombstones installed on the family plot in Riverside Cemetery. Ray and I exchanged quick glances; was this a sales tactic or was he really able to remember individual tombstones? On our way home we stopped by the cemetery just to see if he was correct. He was.

Riverside Cemetery covered land near the river, neatly divided into Catholic and non-Catholic quarters. The Catholic side occupied a high and sandy plain, the non-Catholic rolled beneath oak trees and pines along the Pere Marquette River. Driving through the cemetery and reading surnames on tombstones was a brief and disorienting trip through the past.

Later in the day, the funeral director phoned Ray to say he’d checked into the cemetery lot where Louise's first husband, our grandparents and infant sister were buried. “Back in the 1940's,” he said in a bemused voice, “Louise bought twelve plots.” After our initial surprise we realized it was perfectly in keeping with her penchant for buying in quantity.

At the Alzheimer's Support Group, Susan suggested that we assure Louise that Mike would be taken care of, that perhaps she was clinging to life because she was worried about him and it might set her mind at ease. She also offered to look into care facilities for Mike.

Every time I entered Louise's house I suffered a stab of fear. In the mornings I crept to the sleeping porch and watched her chest for movement, my own breath held. If she took a nap I studied her before I called her for dinner.

"There's a little girl inside her who wants to go home," Kipling said.

I thought about that statement. When my son was born, he had a lung condition that the doctor explained was similar to “two wet panes of glass stuck together.” The doctor told me he wouldn't live and gave me medication to dry up my breast milk. After my son spent two days in an incubator in pediatric intensive care fighting for every breath, still in critical condition, my inability to help, to share my own strength, culminated in my going off the medication and buying a breast pump to express milk every four hours.

I poured that milk down the drain but it stimulated my milk production. I would have breast milk when he recovered. When, in my mind, not if. Besides my mother-desperate prayers, it was all I could think of to do.

With that same sense of helplessness, I decided to take a drive for Louise. She completely and adamantly refused to step inside the car, so I imagined her sitting beside me as we revisited her past.

I followed the secondary gravel roads to my grandparents' old farm, and as I grew near, I approached it in the lives of so many people: as a little girl in the back seat of our car, as my father on his way to help his father bring in the hay, as Louise on a Sunday afternoon. Passing O'Brien's old house a mile from my grandparents’ farm I expected their long-dead black-and-white collie to burst onto the road and chase the car while the Dad laughingly opened his door, and the dog, knowing that game, anticipated it and jumped clear.

All their ghosts, like filmy layers if we could only peel away the present. In the barnyard, with the horses, at the watering trough, making cheese, putting up loose hay. The sense of so much life and passage of parallel time was dizzying. If it could be gathered up and sorted out again, they'd all be there, all the people we loved, in all their flawed beauty and perfection. I could sense them.

All afternoon, Louise sat listlessly in the living room wrapped in an afghan, her feet on the ottoman, unable to rouse herself for more than a few seconds. Either Kipling or I remained in the house, watchful, monitoring her, aware that her time was growing short, that perhaps death truly was approaching.


1932 I started work as a salesgirl. Billy is doing a small job for Jimmy. Boy, this is going to help out beautifully. I’m not so nervous when Bill works. Received food from home.
Solemn May Novena began tonight. I went. Billy went to a meeting.


Next Tuesday, Chapter 24: The Revolt Read More 

ALL OF US AT THE SAME TIME

©Jo Dereske 2014

Chapter 22

An End to Reading

Louise had always been a ravenous reader. She often talked about sneaking in reading when she was a girl while she was supposedly doing chores, or how she haunted the library in Chicago. She cut out poems and articles that stirred her and stockpiled them around the house. She’d been a faithful newspaper subscriber and magazine reader.

Now she claimed her glasses weren't strong enough for her to read. She’d been to the eye doctor only a month earlier, the optometrist she’d been seeing for years and had known since they were teenagers. “My, you’ve gotten old,” she’d blurted in shock when she saw him, and when he advised her she needed a new lens prescription, she said tersely, “I’ve always believed glasses are a bit of chicanery.”

"How about if I find you a large-print book at the library?" I asked.

"Like what?" she challenged.

I suggested Reader's Digest, thinking the short articles might hold her attention.
"Personally, I think Reader's Digest is boring," she sniffed. "I'd prefer a sexy novel."

At the library I examined the large-print collection. No sexy novels but I did find a humorous Gorge Burns book so I checked that out.

Louise thanked me and set the book on a coffee table.

And that was that. She wouldn't let me  Read More 

ALL OF US AT THE SAME TIME

©Jo Dereske 2014

Chapter 21

The Missing Diamond

My mother left Michigan, returning to California to help care for her parents, and that afternoon as I completed a circuit of my trail through the woods, noting the fading of green leaves as summer wound down – way too early, I felt – I spied Louise sitting on the patio holding a tissue to her face.

"Is everything all right?" I asked, sitting in an orange metal lawn chair beside her, thinking she must be missing Mom, her “Junie.”

"I just wish you were my daughter instead of my niece," she said as she dabbed her eyes. She’d never expressed such a sentiment and I was momentarily struck speechless.

"I love you like a daughter would," I told her, "and you are my godmother."

"It's not the same."

I realized then that in my heart of hearts I was grateful to be her niece rather than her daughter. She was too powerful of a woman to have as a mother and I suspect that any daughter who wasn’t born with the same strength as hers would be turned into a rebellious hateful child – or crushed to a weak dishrag of a woman.

But as a friend! Louise had given me a photograph of herself taken when she was twenty-one and living in Chicago. Her eyes confronted me: bold, questioning. The corners of her mouth lifted slightly, as enigmatic as a Mona Lisa, if more sardonic. Her hair was curled and crimped into the height of Depression-era stylishness. The photo sat on the shelf above my desk, next to the oak gall wasp ball, and I found myself glancing at it several times a day. I wish I’d known her then. To have been her contemporary, I suspected, would have been an adventure, never boring. It was there in her eyes: nothing is impossible.

It was a mystery why certain people became unattainable ideals, as Louise had always been for me. Why on earth did I struggle to emulate her? Why, over my life had I looked to her as an example? She was unhappy much of the time, obsessive, compulsive, domineering, drawn to sorrow and depression.

But her spirit was indomitable and her intellect, even in her current state, awesome, her wit breathtaking. She was an unfathomable rich soup of strength, vulnerability, creativity, and generosity; depths and contradictions I couldn’t fathom.

I was convinced if I could be like her, possess that sharp sense of life and complex character, I would be satisfied. But also true, the price of emulating Louise, meant to never be satisfied, maybe even to never be happy.


1931 I had my teeth fixed so my smile is now nice and shiny! Went to the south side with Billy, then Sylvia and Al and Tom came over to play cards. It was a beautiful day for this time of year.

It was just a plain day, with plenty of worries to top everything off. Tony brought over his new girlfriend. Money is tight, either here or not here. I worked for Mrs. B for two days and made a little money. Billy says he’ll make it up to me. But how? We went to confession and Holy Communion. Billy is keeping his promise and looking for a real job.
I went to Novena of the Little Flower and prayed for Billy to get a real job. I’m afraid I’ll go nuts if I’m not careful. What can I do but worry and pray? I’m so discouraged.


Coming around the side of the house after weeding asters, I nearly stumbled over Louise on her hands and knees in the grass. My heart skidded.

“Are you hurt?” I asked, dropping my hoe and kneeling beside her. “Did you fall?”

“I’m looking for it myself.” She sounded angry, controlled. She separated blades of grass, feeling around the roots, her face close to the ground.

“What did you lose? I’ll help you find it.”

“You lost it,” she charged, casting a look at me that set me back on my heels.

“What is it?” I asked again, more warily now.

“My diamond ring. You threw it out in the dishwater.” She raised her swollen, arthritic left hand to show me. There was no ring on her finger, true, but I couldn’t recall ever seeing Louise wear a ring. Her knuckles were too swollen to slide a ring over.

I was silent, thinking wildly what to say. Denying she had a ring would only intensify her certainty that I’d thrown it out.

“Are you sure it was in the dishwater?” We carried all her dishes back to the little house to wash and hadn’t washed so much as a cup in her own sink in months, the only way we’d found to stop her from arguing with us to let her do dishes, knowing she couldn’t and if she tried, it only brought on frustration and sorrow that she’d lost that simple ability. She never seemed to notice us packing up dirty dishes into our wicker basket in front of her and taking them away.

That look again. “It slipped off my finger while I was washing cups in the dishpan and you threw out the pan of water.” She spoke slowly, patiently as if of course, I already knew what I’d done. How could her own niece be so dense? She resumed searching the ground, her hands sliding flat back and forth across the grass.

If I scrambled around on the ground searching, too, wouldn’t it reinforce her belief that I’d indeed thrown out her diamond? Would I be eroding her trust in me and make myself what she believed during her worst bouts of uncertainty and paranoia: a thief taking advantage of her?

That glance of suspicion frequently entered Louise and Mike’s eyes: why were we bossing them around? Why didn’t we go home? Were we after their farm, their money, their car? We couldn’t reasonably argue against their doubts, only wait for them to pass.

“Let’s go in the house and search the kitchen,” I suggested.

“I did,” she replied curtly. “It’s not there.”

“Would you like a cup of tea?”

“After I find my ring.”

She was doomed not to find a ring. The lost diamond was a story I hadn’t heard before and didn’t know what reality it was built on – or even if the basis had been a dream, or perhaps another woman’s experience that had been shared with her.

“What does the ring look like?” In my mind a plan was forming: a similar ring – or even the ring she was hunting for through the grass – might be in her jewelry box. If it were slipped out and placed in the grass for her to find . . .

“Simple. A gold band. A solitaire.”

My spirits rose. That sounded doable. If the ring wasn’t in her jewelry box, maybe we could purchase a similar one. The lost-ring story was entrenching itself in her mind and it would haunt her until we somehow settled the question.

Then she added, “My name is engraved inside it,” and realized what a cowardly subterfuge I was considering in my desperation.

I didn’t know how to solve this one. Louise and I rummaged through her jewelry box without finding a diamond solitaire. I searched the tangle of costume jewelry in her antique shop.

There was no ring. Off and on to varying degrees during the coming days, we’d discover her combing through the grass or feeling around the roots of flowers, once illuminated by the yard light in the middle of the night, brooding over my perceived crime of throwing out her precious diamond with the dishwater.

“You remember my diamond ring, don’t you Mike?” she asked, flexing her naked fingers.

“Diamond ring,” Mike dutifully repeated, and Louise flashed me a See, he knows, too look.

She related the story of my crime to the nurse who sympathetically assured me she’d witnessed similar – and worse – accusations “too many times to count,” and not to be bothered by it. “It comes with the territory,” she said.

The missing ring story would take weeks to fade from Louise’s mind. I knew I was innocent but still I suffered a wave of unfounded guilt when a woman Louise knew called and inquired with an edge of suspicion in her voice if I’d “ever found that ring you threw out in the dish water.”


1931 Billy found a job! But then he had a horrible cold and had to spend the day in bed. But he went to work doing hard nights. Emma and I went to an American Legion concert.

Only five days and Billy was laid off. More worries. He didn’t want me to go back to Mrs. B. I’d rather work like a horse every day than do nothing and have worries. I try to keep my nerves under control but they are slipping all the time. Billy told me he was going to the north side to see Tom Jones.

Mother sent a lovely fat duck for Thanksgiving. Sylvia and Al came over to share. I could forget the worries for a while. It’s heck to be poor but complaining won’t help. I read in the news that we are in a “depression.” It IS depressing. Hah!


Whenever Lithuanians gathered, there was bound to be music: singing, often an accordion, or piano, usually accompanied by food and alcohol. Mike had played a rollicking accordion, but music now held no place in their lives. Louise and Mike didn’t want the radio turned on; they didn’t watch television. We couldn’t coax them into attending any musical events.

“Did you used to listen to music?” I asked Louise.

The question seemed to startle her. “Of course. There was always music, especially in Chicago. We even used to go to Idlewild.”

“You did?” I asked in surprise.

Idlewild existed only twenty miles to the east of us, a former resort town created in the early 1900s for wealthy black vacationers from Chicago, Detroit, and the east. It may as well have been a million miles away when I was growing up.

Rumors, stories, and fact recounted a history of legendary jazz and blues music and musicians, nightclubs and roadhouses and a testing ground for Motown music. Idlewild was a booming center, especially between World Wars I and II, then slowly decaying until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made Idlewild’s original purpose for existing redundant. It dwindled to abandoned buildings and memories, here and there a small clutch of resort homes.

What remained in the area was a shadow of a spontaneous music culture: blues, jazz, gospel. Ginger’s Roadhouse brought in live music, local bars hosted jam sessions.

Eddie Calhoun, the famous bassist who’d played with Erroll Garner, retired to Idlewild that winter and frequently jammed in local bars with musicians who came from afar for the chance to play with the legendary bluesman.

Louise nodded at my question about Idlewild and her eyes went distant. “Idlewild reminded me of Chicago. We went to the south side and sometimes Maxwell Street. It was a wild time: the speak easies and that blues music. I remember – ” She stopped and gave me a sharp look.

“We go to bars to listen to blues sometimes. Will you come with us?”

When a jam session was scheduled word would go out by grapevine and invariably Ray would hear and let us know when and where.

She adamantly shook her head. “No, no. I can’t fit into my dancing shoes anymore.”


1931 Received $5 from Mother and Dad for Christmas. I feel terrible blue that I couldn’t go home because we’re almost broke. Went to midnight mass and then we stayed home all day.


Evelyn didn’t attend the next Alzheimer’s meeting.

“Her husband was admitted to an Alzheimer care unit in Muskegon,” Susan told us as we waited to settle in, chatting, expectant for Evelyn’s arrival.

“But she’ll still come once in a while, won’t she?” Milly asked.

By this time, we’d claimed our chairs around the table, the same seat each meeting and Evelyn’s folding chair, across from mine, sat empty. Despite her rocky beginning, we’d all grown fond of Evelyn, appreciating her sharp wit and impetuous generosity. We were bound together by Alzheimer’s, its trials and challenges difficult to share with people who’d hadn’t been touched by its effects.

Susan hesitated, then told us, “She moved to Florida.”

“But he’s in Muskegon?” Milly’s daughter asked as if she hadn’t heard Susan correctly. Susan nodded.

We were stupefied. Evelyn had left her husband in a care unit in Michigan and moved to Florida?

As she often did, Susan used the situation as a teaching moment. “Don’t feel she’s betrayed him,” she said, exactly where I was heading. “We each cope with the disease differently. He’s in a safe place and she’ll be back to visit him.” I thought Susan made this last statement with less certainty, but she continued, “Evelyn worked very hard to keep her husband at home as long as possible, and she did a valiant job. And she did it alone, by herself, “she emphasized, glancing at Milly and her daughter, and Kipling and me, reminding us that we at least, were not doing this alone, that we had each other for support.

“But he’s her husband,” Julie said. “She made a vow.”

“Maybe this is how she’s honoring her vow.” Kipling, always kinder than me, offered, “by giving him professional care.”

Because some Alzheimer’s patients wandered or became violent, separate wings or specialized nursing homes were required for their care, homes where doors could be locked, the environment kept simple and low key, and the staff-to-patient ratio was higher. Muskegon had the closest such facility, sixty miles away.

Contrary to popular belief, Susan told us, most families struggled to care for their family members with dementia at home, often juggling aging parents with growing children. Care facilities were usually a last resort, after family caregivers were stretched too thin, when the situation demanded professional 24-hour care. Rarely was a nursing home confinement a decision made lightly and rarely was it made without excruciating guilt.

I struggled not to judge. Evelyn’s husband had disappeared from his body forever, certainly as the person she’d married and loved. He didn’t need her presence any more, not her personally. We’d watched the toll his care had taken on Evelyn, how it had nearly broken her own health.

What remained for Evelyn’s husband was humane care – that was the bottom line. That was all that lingered of his future: a hopefully comfortable and safe ending. In my darker days, didn’t I feel overwhelmed and yearn to escape? Wasn’t I hoping for death to avoid a similar fate for Louise and Mike?

It was a reasonable decision – I knew that intellectually – but it still made me uneasy.

But there was a new member of our small sad club. Another middle-aged woman who twisted a tissue in her hands. “My mother forgets my name,” she told us. “And yesterday she thought my son was the paper boy.”

Milly and I exchanged glances. We were the old-timers now, the people with the experience, witnessing the sorrowful saga beginning all over again for another family.


New Year’s Eve. 1931 was a bad year for employment. I never worried so much as this year. Almost broke but I have more hope for the coming year. 1932! Also, //////// -- I’m sorry.


Next Tuesday, Chapter 22: An End to Reading Read More 

ALL OF US AT THE SAME TIME

©Jo Dereske 2014

Chapter 20

Relapse

When Susan explained the details of Mike’s guardianship to Louise, she’d also mentioned the likelihood that Mike had Alzheimer's, and even though before she became ill, Louise knew Mike had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, it was now news to her. "Do you think Mike has Alzheimer’s?" she asked me.

"I don't know," I told her, sensing the obsessive edge to her question and choosing to try to redirect her instead.

"I don't have Alzheimer’s," Mike said. "God."

I continued to re-explain the benefits of Mike’s guardianship, hoping to focus her on that less explosive topic.

"How will Ray pay the bills?"

"Remember," I told her, "You gave Ray power of attorney years ago. That was very wise of you to do that."

Aunt Louise looked up at the ceiling. "Thank you God for Ray."

When I told Ray, he grinned in embarrassment and said, "My shoes just grew two sizes."

But in the coming days, a familiar tangent developed that we were helpless to stop. Louise grew tormented by the idea that Mike had Alzheimer’s. She couldn’t let it rest. She was both terrified and angry by the vision of Mike succumbing to dementia. She cried for hours and accused Mike of having Alzheimer’s, as if it had been his choice. She told him he was forgetful and “going downhill” and she couldn't take care of him; he’d have to be sent away.

When I tried to interfere, to calm her down, she accused me, "You told me he had Alzheimer's."

"I don't know if he does or not," I tried to soothe, "but you're making Uncle Mike feel very bad."

She continued to pick at him. He was helpless under the assault of her rants, growing disturbed and refusing to eat or talk. I returned to the little house and quickly baked chocolate chip cookies, their favorite, and delivered them, warm, forty-five minutes later. Even in Louise's confused state, I felt her behavior was cruel and uncalled for.

Before I opened the door, I heard their raised voices and Mike ask in exasperation, "Well what do you want me to do?"

Which was exactly our question. Kipling and I were both discouraged by our inability to dissuade her from the topic. We watched helplessly as Mike became more sullen and withdrawn.

"What does she want from him," Kipling asked, "an apology?"

Kipling spent more time trying to coax Mike away from Louise, encouraging him to help in the garden, asking him several times a day since usually he’d forgotten he’d just pulled weeds or hoed the carrots. Perversely, the more Louise railed at him, the more Mike wanted to remain in her presence.

Louise and I sat on the patio as Kipling walked past across the yard.

“Don’t you think I belong in a nursing home?” she called to Kipling, plainly searching for reassurance. “I can’t take care of Mike and I can’t take care of myself.”

“This isn’t the time to go into a nursing home,” Kipling said conversationally over his shoulder. “It’s warm and everything’s green. Winter’s a better time,” and he kept on walking.

She gazed after him, her mouth open in surprise, and gave a half grunt - half chuckle.

As often happened when Mike was under stress, he wet himself and needed a bath.

"Do you want Kipling to come wash your back?" Louise asked, her attention momentarily diverted.

Mike, who was extremely modest, guffawed. "I can do it myself," he said self-righteously.

"Good," I told him, "I'll start your bath."

"Don't make it too hot," he warned me.

Triumphantly, certain that this would be the easiest bath yet – I ran water and coaxed Mike into the bathroom, leaving him to finish undressing and get into the tub. I had returned to sit in the kitchen with Louise when Mike stalked into the room, stark naked. He looked accusingly at me and said, “That water isn’t hot."

I was so dumbfounded I prattled on about fixing it for him, and he followed me into the bathroom while I ran hot water. "Let me test it," he said, perfectly coherent. "It's all right. Shut it off."

All the time nonchalantly standing around naked.

Back in the kitchen I heard him happily splashing water and humming a tune behind the closed bathroom door.


1931 I’m very nervous and jumpy. I need Billy. Went to Scottville with Mother and Dad. Dad tried to talk to me about Bill but he doesn’t know the whole story. I work as hard as I can at whatever I do. It’s the only way not to think.


The plot we hatched to divert Louise from agonizing over Mike’s Alzheimer’s wasn’t exactly honest but it worked.

“You know what we should do,” I said in a conspiratorial tone to Louise the next morning. “Let’s plan a birthday party for Uncle Mike.”

“When’s his birthday?” she asked.

“June fifteenth,” I told her. It was already August and we had celebrated his birthday in June. It was taking a chance because Louise’s memory was unreliable enough that she might actually recollect the cake and candles, and especially the singing.

But she didn’t remember. “Let’s do it.,” she said, her eyes shining. “A surprise party. With Ray and Barb and the children. Don’t they have children?”

Naturally she couldn’t keep it a secret, but that didn’t matter since each day was new to Mike and it would still be a surprise no matter how many times he was told. The second she saw him, she bestowed a loving smile on him and announced, “We’re having a birthday party for you, Mikey. It’s a surprise.”

Mike frowned. “How old am I?”

“You’ll be eighty-one,” I supplied since they both appeared unsure.

"Eighty-one?" he repeated in disbelief. "No!"

"Do you still feel like a kid?" Louise asked. She was beaming. To call upon her natural generosity drew out her best, or pulled her from a black funk.

Mike was too excited to convey his complete thought but he made fists and vigorously waved his arms like a fighter. "I feel like I'm . . . eeeeeeeee."

"Does that mean we're going to have sex tonight?" Louise asked slyly.

"Gawd," Mike drawled.

"Well, if you're young and able, why not?"

"You're being childish," Mike told her.

"I don't think so. I think that was a very adult suggestion."

The birthday celebration involved a barbecue, a cake and balloons. Louise would never allow such attention for herself but she lavished it on Mike, who couldn't stop grinning. Her involvement in the upcoming celebration was rapt and joyous. She asked for and repeated the details whenever she saw us. “Will you put fifty candles on the cake? He’ll be fifty, right?”

“What should I wear?”

“Did we buy Mike a present?”

The day we’d chosen was clouded over in the morning but turned into a beautiful sunny afternoon. Ray set up the barbecue grill on the patio and grilled hamburgers and hot dogs while Barbara and I decorated the table and carried out the salad and baked beans, chips, and all the accouterments. All the time Louise sat close to Mike, touching him and asking, “Are you surprised, Mikey?”

We snapped photos of Louise and Mikes sitting close together on the rock apron she’d built around the tree, in shorts and barefoot, laughing. More photos with us four adults, and with the four children.

After we sang “Happy Birthday” and Mike blew out a single candle, three- year-old Luke sighed and said, “I love this day.”

That night, after the celebration had ended and we’d washed dishes and put away the barbecue, Kipling and I sat in the swing and listened to the cicadas. Louise’s house was dark and peaceful. The cicadas sang on into the darkness, their whirring voices like high tension electrical wires. In the mornings we found the husks of their bodies fastened to the trunks of the pine trees. Amber shells, completely intact, still clung to the bark, holes in their backs where they'd climbed out and gone on to a momentary higher plane, a brief gift of flight before they laid their eggs and died.

And for a while the specter of Alzheimer’s and illness faded from the farm.


1931 I hated to leave home but I took the 9:45 back to Chicago. Bill was waiting for me with flowers, but I’m not ready to forgive him yet. He took me to a new place on 63rd Street. It’s nice. My sofa is set up by the window. Bill told me I don’t need to look for work.
We went to see “One Reckless Hour.” It was good. A cloudy close day.


When my mother married into my father’s family, she spent her first years in bewilderment.

She was quiet, educated, and kept her emotions under tight rein.

They were oversized – both in physicality and personality – vibrant, big people whose emotions spilled out at the merest provocation. Over-sensitive about what was said to them, insensitive as to what they said to others.

My mother was in literal bewilderment as well because as long as my grandparents were alive, their children only spoke Lithuanian in their presence, even to each other, without bothering to translate for the uninitiated. As a child, I understood Lithuanian, although I couldn’t have explained why. I couldn’t speak it or read it, only absorbed it the way children do and promptly lost that facility by puberty.

“There are men who prefer a woman like her,” Louise had said regarding my mother, “Mild. Someone they can boss around.”

She and my mother had danced around each other one another from the moment they were introduced. My father bought the house we all grew up in as a surprise while she was in the hospital giving birth to me. Louise helped him pay for it, furnish and set up the house for our homecoming. My mother was clueless of Louise’s involvement until years later. Louise had never forgiven her for not thanking her.

And my mother had probably never forgiven her for her involvement, usurping her choice and making her a guest in her first home.

“Johnny was in love with another woman,” Louise told me. “A Lithuanian girl. We believed they’d be married by Christmas but then he laid eyes on your mother and that was that. They married three months later.” She shook her head. “Oh my, but that was a scene.” She gave me a dark look as if I’d somehow played a role in the other woman’s abandonment.

“What happened?” I asked. I adored gossip, or as I preferred to think of it: stories.

She shrugged. “Just what you’d expect when a woman has her heart broken. She finally married somebody else, but everybody knew she wasn’t happy. She’s still around.”

“Who is it?”

But she wouldn’t say.

Louise and my mother misinterpreted each other, both of them generous and then hurt when they suspected their generosity wasn’t appreciated. Each of them strong women in her own manner. My mother quiet, forceful like water, her determination not to complain worn like a credo. Louise was straight forward, brooking no fools and ready to take on anyone she believed deserved it.

Yet they sought each other out, defended one another, comforted and supported each other through tragedy, always searching for gifts each hoped the other would enjoy.

An hour and a half together was about their limit before their smiles froze, their hands wrung, or fingers tapped, and they looked for any excuse to escape, as if they knew they were about to slip into a minefield where my mother might say, “Your roses are beautiful. I’m more of a hydrangea person myself,” and Louise would parry with, “Hydrangeas are boring. They bloom no matter what you do to them. There’s no challenge in hydrangeas.”

And if the escalation wasn’t brought to a screaming halt, it would continue until they parted ways in prickly stiffness, not speaking again for weeks.

So I didn’t tell Louise my mother was coming to visit until the night before she arrived.

“June’s coming? No! I miss that girl,” and she waxed on about Mom’s gorgeous chestnut hair – long ago turned white– her calmness. “Smiling, always smiling. I’ve never heard her complain once in all the years I’ve known her.”

But even telling Louise of Mom’s visit the night before her arrival was too soon.

At daylight, I looked out to see Louise, fully clothed, sitting on her patio with her chair turned to face the little house.

“Is Junie here yet? I’ve been waiting all night.”

It had been a project to secretly remove clothes from Louise’s closet that required buttoning, zipping or hooking, replacing them with new snap-on or buttonless clothing that were slipped into her closet when she wasn’t looking. She was convinced these were old second-hand clothes a friend had given her. The friend, Kitty, had been dead for years. “I’m happy I didn’t throw this out,” she said showing off a sleeveless dress I’d tucked in the day before. “When do you think Junie will be here? Didn’t she just have surgery?”

Ten years earlier, our mother had had breast cancer and a mastectomy. She had serenely and silently suffered through recovery and chemotherapy, each session leaving her vomiting and weak when she retreated to her bedroom for a day and emerged as if she’d only just taken a nap.

On the day my father died of a sudden heart attack, she’d completed a chemo treatment that morning and managed to hold off being sick until she and my brother and sister retrieved me from my late arrival at the airport. Once we were back at the house she spent the night retching and the next morning began composedly planning our father’s funeral.

After she’d passed her seventh year without a cancer recurrence, we’d celebrated. It was behind her. It had been ten years now. Just the year before, her ninth after surgery, there’d been a “spot” on her chest, which she assured us was small, insignificant, and had been eradicated by a few zaps of radiation. Flash and it was gone. She’d carried on as calmly as usual, moving to California to help care for her aging parents, assuring us that everything was “fine;” she felt “good.”

When Ray drove in with Mom in the passenger seat, Louise was up and beside the car before my mother opened her door.

They hadn’t seen each other in a year and they hugged and talked at the same time, their voices stumbling over each other’s. Even Mom’s eyes were wet.

We left them chattering on the patio and could hear their happy voices and laughter through the windows of the little house.

But true to form, ninety minutes later we noticed Louise glancing toward the little house as if looking for rescue, and our mother rubbing her arms and petting Morris.

I went to the patio and invited them both to the little house for a cup of coffee. “No, no,” Louise answered, much as I’d expected. “You go. I think I’ll take a little nap now.”

Mom was saddened by Louise’s deterioration. “She kept asking me if I’d recovered from my surgery yet. That was over ten years ago.”

She spent the next few days visiting family and friends in a whirlwind that left me exhausted hearing about it. Her family was extensive and had lived in the county over a hundred years and many of the people she talked about – those she “had to see” – were only names to me. As the time of her flight back to California approached, she asked my brother to take her one more time to visit the cemeteries in the county, nearly every one of which held a relative.

She seemed full of energy, happy to be in Michigan. When we asked her about her health, the new doctor she’d off-handedly mentioned, she laughed, advising us not to worry, she was “just fine.” And as Louise noted, “Smiling, always smiling.”


1931 Billy is gone to a meeting or to the south side at all hours, night and day. It makes me lonesome, blue and crabby. I’d like to go to the south side sometimes, but he doesn’t want me to. He bought me a new coat. Sylvia and I went to see Joan Crawford in “Modern Age.” John came over for dinner. I told Billy Big Mike is not welcome.

Next Tuesday, Chapter 21: The Missing Diamond Read More 

ALL OF US AT THE SAME TIME

©Jo Dereske 2014

Chapter 19

Legalities

Susan counseled Ray through the weeks of filing for Mike’s guardianship. Years earlier, when Louise had designated Ray as her legal representative and given him power of attorney, it had been a simple move on her part. She asked Ray, he said yes, and she made the arrangements with her lawyer. Ray had hardly thought of it again, considering it a precaution on her part, and its implementation a distant future, at best.

When it was necessary for Ray to step in for Louise, the legalities were in place. It was a seamless transition.

Now we learned how time-consuming, tedious, and hoop-filled the same process was when the person in question was no longer able make his own decisions. The measures existed to protect people like Mike, we understood that, yet dealing with courts, lawyers, social workers and reams of paperwork left an ashy taste, as if the whole process had gone from a loving family’s concerns to a legal three-ring circus where we were being charged with proving our innocence.

The guardianship included a hearing, testimonies as to Ray’s good intent and our “care plans,” court appearances and a court-appointed guardian, as well as critical competency tests. We were grateful Susan was able to do some of the testing and paperwork with a minimum of disturbance for Mike.

On the day the attorney representing Mike came to the farm to assess Mike’s competency, Kipling took Louise out for ice cream, a treat she couldn’t resist. The attorney, who I remembered being three years ahead of me in high school, interviewed Mike in the kitchen. I stayed to assist Mike if I were needed, keeping out of sight in the living room where I blatantly listened to their exchange.

The lawyer explained the legalities of the guardianship process to Mike and the upcoming hearing. At each of the attorney’s pauses, Mike repeatedly responded, “Well, I don’t know about that.” He was calm, polite.

“I saw your niece outside,” the lawyer gently tested Mike. “Is her name Jo or Jo Anne?”

“I don’t know what her name is.”

“She called you Uncle Mike.”

“Everybody calls me Uncle Mike.”

After more questions that Mike evaded or simply repeated back to him, the attorney told Mike he was “a gentleman,” and Mike said, “Well, what can you do?”

Another factor of the guardianship process was that Mike needed a physical examination. Barbara, who had a deft touch with Mike and as Ray’s wife, would also be one of his legal guardians, decided to take him.

On the morning of his appointment, I carefully explained the plan to Mike. It was one time when he understood me perfectly. He banged his fist on the table and stood up. “No. No doctors. I’m not going.”

I dropped the subject and poured him another cup of coffee, taking the cowardly route to keep peace, prattling about whether it might rain. He needed a bath and clean clothes, an undertaking Kipling usually tackled.

Ten minutes after returning to the little house, Mike flung open our screen door, stepped inside, and growled, “I’m not going!”

Kipling walked Mike back to the house. He was there a half hour and returned looking exhausted. “Aside from tackling him and throwing him bodily into the bathtub, this isn’t going to work. And Louise defends him every time I try to persuade him.”

I tried to phone Barbara to warn her of our failure, but she was already on her way to pick up Mike.

I was at the house when Barbara drove up at the prearranged time. Mike smelled horrible; the front of his pants were sodden. He sat rigidly on the edge of his bed on the sleeping porch, his mouth and hands clenched.

“Mike’s not going anywhere with you,” Louise told Barbara.

Barbara picked up Mike’s clean clothes and shoved them into a paper bag, then cheerfully said to Mike, “Okay, let’s go.”

And, as Louise commented from the table where she sat watching, Mike stood up and went with Barbara, “sputtering all the way out the door.”

Later, Barbara told us she’d helped Mike change his wet clothes in the doctor’s restroom. Mike was physically healthy, the doctor reported, vigorous even. His incontinence would only get worse, as would his mental condition. Mike amiably agreed with the doctor that he’d wear disposable briefs but we all knew that’s all he was being: amiable.

“That girl could talk the devil into heaven,” Louise said of Barbara.

When Barbara heard that, a puzzled look crossed her face. “Why can I convince a demented old man to do what I want but not a five-year-old?”

As the legalities began to grind through the court system, we heard from Mike’s daughter. She agreed that Ray should become her father’s guardian and drove for three days from Florida to Michigan to attend the hearing and visit her father. Although her connections to Mike in her adult years had been tenuous, the hearing signified a painful loss to her, a wrenching finality. Their history was vague to us, consigned to a world “before Louise,” but the grief that remained was evident. She was a gentle woman, a gifted artist, who longed to reach out to her father before it was too late.

Mike was uncertain of her identity, and treated her as he would a kind stranger. She sat beside him on the patio in the warm evening, reminding him of a car trip the family had embarked on when she was a child, how he’d taken her to the Park Dairy for ice cream cones and taught her to ride a bicycle. He responded as he had to the attorney assessing his competence, saying either “Yup,” or “Well, I don’t know about that.” Polite, friendly, and vague.

It was a sad and powerful reminder of the fragility of our connections.


1931 I received the letter from Bill that I’ve been dreading and fearing. Yes, dear Lord, he lied to me. I suspected as much but he even lied when I asked him to his face. I’m so blue and broken hearted. Lies can kill love, I’m convinced.


We were relieved when the hearings were over and the judge granted guardianship to Ray, not only because the legal machinations were behind us but because Mike’s care could now be assured, and yes, even that we’d have guidance and back-up from the court system.

Ray was armed with record-keeping protocols, scheduled meetings with the court, detailed orders of what he – and we – could and couldn’t do for Mike, and crucial warnings as to his accountability.

“I’ll come out and explain the guardianship to your aunt,” Susan told us.

“She’ll be confused,” I warned her.

“Yes, she will be,” Susan agreed, “But Mike’s her husband and legally and morally she has to be told. If I tell her, it may leave a more lasting impression.”

We meticulously planned Susan’s announcement, anticipating that Louise would be agitated. On the appointed date, a cool rainy August day that threatened thunderstorms, Ray waited in the little house with me so he could talk to Louise after Susan explained the guardianship. Louise instinctively turned to Ray when she was confused about anything legal or financial, even personal. Kipling had taken Mike to the creek to look for fish.

We nervously sat drinking coffee and waiting while Susan spent a half an hour with Louise. When she finished, Susan stepped through the front door of the little house, her eyes moist. " I've rarely seen such compassion and love for a husband like your aunt has for your uncle."

She had explained the guardianship to Louise several times in as simple terms as possible. "Your aunt claims she understands what I’m telling her, but I don't think she'll express her real fears to me," she told Ray. "You'll probably bear the brunt of that."

Next, Ray walked over to the main house and talked to Louise, repeating all that Susan had said: that Uncle Mike needed someone to be legally responsible for him, to help with his social security checks and to be able to authorize care if he became ill.

Ray reported that Louise claimed several times, "That woman's too young," referring to Susan, but he believed she’d accepted the need for a legal guardian. We were all relieved by how easily it had transpired.

After Ray left, I let a half hour elapse before I joined Louise and Mike. Louise immediately asked me, "Did that little nurse come over and talk to you?"

"Yes, she did."

"Well, what do you think about it all?"

"I think it's a good idea."

Louise was stricken. Her eyes filled and she rocked anxiously in her chair, raising her hands to her mouth. "You mean you believe Mike should go into the nursing home?"

I was so shocked I responded far more forcefully than necessary.

"Uncle Mike's not going into a nursing home. No one is taking him to a nursing home. This will make it easier for him to stay here with you."

"I thought that was why that little nurse was here," Louise said, frowning, "to put him in a nursing home."

I grabbed Mike's arm and nearly shouted in an attempt to make a point she would remember. "No, they're not taking Uncle Mike to a nursing home, definitely not."

"They wouldn't want me, anyway," Mike mumbled.

"I'll lie down in the driveway if anyone tries to take Uncle Mike away," I said and they both laughed. It was an image that tickled them, especially Mike.

As if they'd had a small dose of electric shock, the room glowed with tenderness. If they could hold onto the preciousness of their feelings toward one another and their current awareness of the joy at being able to stay in their home together, I felt with sudden ebullience that I could help them indefinitely.

"If I die, Mikey," Louise asked, “will you go out looking for a younger woman?"

"I don't know."

"I might get someone else," Louise told him, miffed he hadn't outright rejected the idea of finding a younger woman. "I'd have to go out looking."

"Well, if you want to go out looking," I told Louise, "we'd have to load you in the car and drive you around."

Louise laughed and Mike joined in, shaking his finger.

“Remember when we took the Studebaker . . .” she began and stopped, realizing she was relating a memory about her first husband, not Mike. “I’ve had so many husbands I don’t remember them all.”

“Shit.” Mike said.

“Well, later I’ll make a list so I don’t forget.”

“So many husbands. God oh God.”

‘You’ll be at the top of the list, Mikey. Would you like that?”

“No. I want to be at the bottom. Last.”

The low rumble of thunder was audible in the distance and Louise looked up at the darkening sky, suddenly sobering. “Are the windows closed?”

“They are,” I assured her. “All of them.”

"I'm terrified of thunder and lightning," she said. "Once we had company from Chicago and a terrible storm blew in. A tornado came across the field so we ran to the basement. We were all huddled in the corner when we realized Mike wasn't with us. I thought he'd been killed.”

“Hah,” Mike interrupted.

“But afterward,” Louise continued, motioning him to be quiet, “there Mike was, sopping wet, standing out in the garden, with a big smile on his face. 'You missed a good one,' he told me."

“Yup,” Mike said.

“Gary Cooper,” she teased him.


1931 A letter from Bill asking me to forgive him. I can’t yet. I don’t sleep very well at night. It would be better if he’d slept with a woman instead. What if he’s hurt or killed or-- ? Picked beans but the crops are poor due to not enough rain.


Next Tuesday, Chapter 20: Relapse Read More