Loving The Ones You're With

I wrote the following after an experience I had in 2008:

For the first time, I saw a patient with dementia and it shook me to my core.

Its victim and her husband, both in their late-eighties, creaked through a hospital corridor, he escorting her. She, confused most of the time, would have momentary flashes of realization and we all knew she was rediscovering for a fleeting instant who and where she was - then cloudy puzzlement again. When they asked her name, she turned to her husband and asked him what it was. When asked to sign a document, she didn't know what to write and looked to her husband for clues as to the answer. And he, very patiently, answered her every question and corrected her every foolish remark.

Such a pretty lady did not match with the picture I had in my mind of a demented elderly lady. She was polite, gracious, and jovial with everyone. I thought this must be what it is like to see a person's soul -- when our brains, as part of our bodies, die, maybe what's left is the spirit, and hers was certainly peaceful and kind. The hospital staff seemed to know how vulnerable she was and was so careful with her. Her frail husband was quite the faithful sentinel. In all her world, her husband was the only steadily familiar presence, and she trusted him completely. For her sake, I was grateful he was alive, and I shuddered to think what would happen to her if he were to die first.

So what shook me? It wasn't her condition. It was the idea that it could happen to me, or worse to someone I love. What if that happened to my wife, the Lord forbid? Who would be there for her. Instantly, I wanted to take extra care of my body so that if that were to be her fate, she would have one face she could turn to in all her confusion and feel okay. I pushed the idea away about what they would do to her if I weren't around. I remember a friend telling me that when you're told a close loved one has a fatal disease, your ideas shift, and even food doesn't taste the same anymore.