This week is a milestone. Joan is now away from home for a year. Shortly before Christmas last year we made our regular monthly visit to our neurologist. I was stunned when, after a few questions, the physician ordered, “When you leave this office you need to bring your wife to an emergency room; tell the admissions people that she needs to be stabilized.” I was angry and disappointed. I thought that Joan’s regimen of nine prescriptions would eventually have had some effect. I wanted more time.
Instead of going to the hospital, I drove to our son’s house in Vermont. The visit allowed me time to settle down and think. During our drive home that evening, however, I desperately sought for reasons to reject the neurologist’s direction. I imagine that deep in my heart, I knew that we were close to irrevocably changing our lives. I also knew the right thing to do.
Feeling like Judas Iscariot, I drove to the hospital. For the seven days that Joan spent there I visited nursing homes. I don’t remember much of last Christmas, except that I needed to think and to pray. I went to the vigil mass on Christmas Eve, then had dinner with Joan in her hospital room. So, the celebration of hope and possibility passed us by. On New Year’s Eve, Joan was at The Hilltop. Hope had withered, and our only option was to adjust to life alone after 48 years of marriage.
Now, a year later, Joan’s symptoms have not changed much. Each day is a bit different — sometimes she is calm and passive, sometimes she is nervous and agitated. When she is agitated she exhibits symptoms often seen in the cognitive unit — she paces the corridor, shuffles papers in the nurses’ station, and inspects other patients’ rooms. Frequently she picks up an object that she fancies — a sheet of paper, a book, an article of clothing and finds a new place for it. The nurses call patients like these “roamers” and “foragers.”
Most of Joan’s time is spent searching for something. In an earlier blog I mentioned that when I asked her what she was looking for she said, “Myself.” She has left familiar landscapes and is in terra incognita. Perhaps she looks for shards of her past life. Emily Dickinson, one of our local poets wrote, “…my life is over there — behind the shelf.”
So 2012 will find both of us searching behind shelves. Perhaps each of us will be heartened by the memories (faint as they may be) of Christmases past.
If she could, I know that Joan would wish all readers of this blog peace and happiness at Christmas and health and prosperity in the new year.
The Bridge of Sighs 