Tag Archives: husband with memory loss

A Summer Moment

daily life with MCI/Alzheimer's, , , , , ,

Here’s a poem for a change of pace. I feel a bit shy posting it here, but It does capture Ralph’s life at this stage of his cognitive impairment better than  a longer explanation perhaps. I have had some trouble with formatting so hope this looks ok….

A Summer Moment

Black birds part the clouds, a river

fast and noisy as Mountain Creek itself

casting its black shadow across the grass.

The noisy rush of wing and throat and beating air

filters through the branches of dogwood and oak.

They come and come and are gone in a rush.

The air goes still.

Out on the porch where you rock and drink beer

the radio talks to you about tornadoes in Texas

and politicians whose name you rarely remember.

The dogs sleep at your feet, their dog breath

thickened by the smoke from your cigarette,

your brain a black river of lost thoughts.

Learning to Love Ralph’s Mental Check Ups

Tracking Changes, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“We” had “our” six month check up the other day at the Emory Memory Clinic. “We” and “our” are operative words because I probably get as much out of the appointments with our Nurse Practitioner Stephanie as Ralph does. The visits are medical but also psychologically therapeutic and unlike any other doctor visits I have ever experienced.

I admit it never starts well. Ralph asks if we really need to go all the way there (I have learned not to mention the appointment until that morning). And the waiting room time is always uncomfortable, Ralph and I  both secretly looking around at the other couples—everyone present is in a couple whether husband/wife, siblings, parent/child, or cared for/caregiver—trying to guess which person is the patient. I frequently realize I have guessed wrong when the person I assumed was impaired is the one who heads up to the nurse station to sign in. Ralph gets anxious because seeing people with his diagnosis but more advanced into cognitive impairment forces him to consider his own future. I get anxious for pretty much the same reason.

But once we are in the actual room, I am probably more myself than at any other time these days because we are together with someone who knows our situation, who does not look sympathetic but slightly askance at anything we say. This visit Ralph was to have a battery of tests to check his status. The tests take about 45 minutes; I actually thought of sneaking down to the second floor to say hi to a friend who works in the building. Instead those 45 minutes were filled with conversation with Stephanie about my concerns and worries. When I mentioned issues I don’t bring up anywhere else or to anyone else out of some probably misguided mix of embarrassment and guilt—and there are issues I do not bring up in my support group or even here—she responded with matter-of-fact solutions and understanding of someone who has witnessed all the permutations of cognitive impairment. My tendencies toward defensiveness, guilt, and self-justification melted. I could see clearly where I thought Ralph was on the continuum, that his memory seems to have held steady but his energy, curiosity and interest in the world has faded.

And then Ralph returned from his testing in buoyant spirits. He felt he had done really well on the test. And he had. Although he got more questions wrong than he thought, the score on his memory has held steady. (Shout of thanks to Namenda and donepezil.) He still qualifies as Mild Cognitive Impairment and is holding Alzheimer’s at bay.

We are scheduled to return to see Stephanie in six months. She said that if it was inconvenient since we come from a distance, we could skip that appointment. No way. I am looking forward to it.

An Evening with Ralph and Bob

Alzheimer's and the Arts, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Dylan that is.

The other night Ralph and I went to what was at least the fourth Bob Dylan concert we have attended together over the years. And since it was probably the last Dylan concert we will attend together, it was bittersweet. It has often felt as if our shared love of Dylan has been the glue holding us together as a couple despite major differences on politics, religion, childrearing, and who forgot to roll up the car windows before it rained.

Dylan has been a bond with our kids and our extended family as well. Ralph took his oldest son to a concert when he was about eleven and took our daughter when she was sixteen; our middle boy got gypped, especially given that he wrote at least one high school English paper on Highway 61 and looks a lot like Dylan (as do I according to one family joke). My daughter has kept all the vinyl records from our complete pre-1985 Dylan collection, but we still have a framed Milton Glaser graphic that came inside one of the album covers hanging in our bathroom. We also have a limited edition Dylan self-portrait print that my Dylan look-alike son gave us one x-mas and a long shelf of books by and about Dylan that my sister, another Dylan fan, has given us one at a time over the years. My daughter chose Forever Young for the father-daughter dance at her wedding last October, but first she and Ralph went through every Dylan song to find the lyrics that worked best. I am not mentioning all the hours of Ralph singing Dylan or the Christmas get-togethers set to Dylan instead of carols.

Yes, we are just a teensy bit fanatical.

Yet Ralph was not enthusiastic about going to the Dylan concert. He doesn’t listen to music much any more, and he considered getting dressed and driving somewhere (or being driven by me) “too much trouble.” But I pointed out that getting out of the house one night a week is literally what his doctor has ordered in a written prescription—she now writes prescriptions for things like “art lessons” and “no more than three beers a day”—so Ralph reluctantly agreed.

Of course our daughter and her husband were also going to the concert—she wouldn’t marry a man who wasn’t a Dylan fan– so we met them and some of their friends for funky Mexican beforehand. Ralph enjoyed the meal and the company although time and place anxiety kicked in as it does whenever he is out of his regular at-home groove. Fortunately I had reserved parking only two blocks from the venue, but Ralph, who strolls with his dog on the farm for hours, complained the whole five minutes that “we have been walking forever.”

There was a lobby full of people to contend with and the visit to the restroom, which frankly filled me with anxiety because it would be so easy for Ralph to get confused and lost. But all went well and we sat down in our seats just as the lights dimmed.

And there was that small 73 year-old man strutting his stuff and singing, in pretty good voice too, that he is “an artist, I don’t look back.” At other Dylan concerts purist Ralph has not appreciated Dylan experimenting with his arrangements, but this time he didn’t seem to mind  that Dylan only sang four or five songs that Ralph actually recognized, perhaps because he doesn’t remember the originals that well himself. And he loved Dylan’s harmonica riffs and his new version of Tangled Up in Blue. The new Ralph is non-judgmental. He just flows with the experience.

On stage experience and in the audience experience. In the past, Ralph might have been furious at the man in the row in front of us drunkenly spilling liquor everywhere and shouting requests for Isis when he wasn’t making out with his girlfriend. This time Ralph just laughed the guy off as part of the fun, a new story he might tell.

When we joined up with my daughter and her friends for a nightcap afterwards, Ralph told the story he has told ten thousand times, about when he was supposed to meet Dylan. Actually he told the store that night about six times before I stopped counting. For a man who goes to bed by eight every night, he was full of energy. I had to drag him away shortly after midnight. Walking back to the car, we passed a jazz club. Stopping to listen at the door, Ralph announced, “We need to come back here soon and do this again.” I agreed wholeheartedly, thinking what a magical night we’d had, how lucky we had this bond of music and family to remember. Maybe:

Ralph has not mentioned Dylan, the concert, or our night out since.

Money Talks….

daily life with MCI/Alzheimer's, Tracking Changes, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

According to a recent article in the New York Times: “As Cognition Slips, Financial Skills Are Often the First to Go.”  financial cognition is one of the first skills to go. According to Ralph: Money talks, bullshit walks.

When we first met, Ralph was something of a hippie entrepreneur. By the time he was thirty, he’d dropped the hippie part and considered himself a real estate entrepreneur—buying, renovating, managing and leveraging small apartment buildings–while I pursued my less than financially lucrative writing ambitions. Then his longtime bookkeeper quit suddenly and I had to take over the day-to-day bookkeeping. At the time I didn’t want to take on that responsibility, but in retrospect I am really glad I did. When I needed to liquidate the business two years ago, I knew the basics, like where the checking accounts were, but also the larger framework of how to run the business the way Ralph did. He remained the one who made the serious financial decisions, but I watched and learned.

And what I learned was to be obsessively careful. I used to tease him about the way he analyzed and re-analyzed every business decision, going over and over the worst case and best case scenarios, ‘running the numbers’ as he called it. So what struck me in reading the Times article was this line: “It may become more difficult for people to identify the risks in a particular investment, and they may focus too much on the benefits.” Ralph’s last three investments were frankly terrible.

Luckily those were his last investments. Unfortunately, they were his last investments because Ralph’s follow-through was also going. Ralph always took great pride in being “a closer.” So what I saw as his flagging interest in following through caught my eye as a problem sooner than his forgetfulness. I realize now that he probably no longer trusted his own judgment. He went through the motions, but he had checked out at least a year before his diagnosis. He sat in his office reading catalogs and magazines while letting his assistant and me run things. Fortunately, he’d done such a good job training us that we did fine for awhile.

We may have lost some money due to Ralph’s MCI, but I am kind of glad Ralph had that time to loosen his hold on the business. A grace period.

Because once we had the official diagnosis of Mild Cognitive Impairment, there was no pretending. And by the time I decided to sell the business, Ralph’s impairment was greater while his interest in anything financial had dropped to zero. The man who loved to spend days doing profit loss projections can no longer figure the tip on a restaurant tab.

Flowers and Laughter, Ralph’s Perfect Gift

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Ralph's birthday flowers

These are the roses Ralph gave me for my 65th birthday.

Sixty-five feels like a biggie. Like everyone I know my age (except Ralph who has been saying “I’m an old man” to explain his cognitive impairment since he was, well my age) I don’t feel old. Physically I am in good health; I get plenty of exercise and, despite from those pesky escaping words and names, keep myself mentally challenged. But at 65, the fact of no turning back is staring me in the face. I have begun worrying about my sight and hearing, about the limp that still plagues me 18 months after my broken ankle, about a certain timidity that has crept into my driving. To say I’ve been obsessing about this birthday would be putting it mildly.

But then again I have obsessed over birthdays  for as long as Ralph and I have been together.

And with good reason. For most of those forty odd years, my birthday has been a day of recrimination, guilt, and tears. He almost never remembered unless one of the kids reminded him and he was terrible about getting me a gift or arranging a dinner out. I started winding myself up in a knot of resentment days ahead so by the actual day I was impossible to please anyway. One year I locked myself in the bedroom in tears rather than eat the Kentucky Fried Chicken he’d picked up as my last-minute birthday meal. But with age come a little wisdom and more patience. Also small miracles.

Since Ralph was diagnosed with memory loss, his memory has actually improved in one area, my birthday. In fact birthdays, like Christmas and our anniversary, highlight the ironic upside of our life with Early Alzheimer’s—Ralph has become an overt romantic. Boxes of candy and flowers appear magically on the big days without prompting (at least none I know about). And I have found appreciation for his effort comes much easier, especially since I have embraced planning the celebration myself (this year, because it was a biggie—the end of middle age, the beginning of Medicare—has included dinners with friends and dim sum, both attended with Ralph, plus a trip to visit my son in New York by myself since Ralph is no longer willing to travel)

So yesterday morning, I lounged in bed drinking the coffee Ralph had made me when he walked in the bedroom with a bouquet of roses plus a card. I’d guessed he’d been out present buying the day before when I caught him driving into the driveway in his truck, and I have to say the fact that he picked out a card was probably more meaningful that the flowers. But they looked lovely, the reddest roses I’d ever seen. I couldn’t believe he’d found them at Kroger’s.

Proud of himself, he went off with the flowers to find a vase. But he couldn’t find one–I used to blow glass so there are vases on every flat surface in our house–so I reluctantly got up and found one for him him. Then he couldn’t get the flowers unwrapped. So I took them from him.

“They’re not real.”

“But they were in the flower cooler at Kroger’s.” He felt the petals and considered. “You know I thought it was funny that they didn’t have a scent. I was hoping that soaking them in water all night would bring it out.” He laughed. “Well these will certainly be a gift that lasts.”

“Yes they will,” I agreed.

“I thought it was funny that they didn’t have a scent. I was hoping that soaking them in water all night would bring it out.” He laughed a few minutes later. “Well, at least these will certainly be a gift that lasts.”

“Yes they will,” I agreed again.

We must have laughed together for half an hour. And again telling the story to our friends at dinner, especially after a friend suggested to Ralph, “Put them away and give them to her again next year.”

And again when another friend admitted she had a sunflower at home that was suspiciously fresh after three weeks and she better get home and check it.

And what makes the laughter delicious and the story one we’ll keep telling is that it could have happened to anyone, not just someone with cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s related memory loss.

I have to admit, this has been the best birthday ever, or at least since I got that brownie camera when I was six.

The Theory of Alice–A Politically Incorrect Review Revised

Alzheimer's and the Arts, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

After two back-to-back days of movie going last week, I got fired up to write a politically incorrect review. Something along the lines of:

The Theory of Everything, about brilliant but Lou Gehrig’s disease enfeebled Steven Hawking and his complicated marriage(s), is fairly standard, respectful bio fare but speaks to me about the nuances of living with a disabled spouse more than Still Alice’s Alzheimer’s stricken professor facing her deterioration with noble grit. Alice, like the earnest, follow-the-dots novel on which it’s based, struck me as an agenda film meant to pull heart-strings without making anyone too uncomfortable. All the chestnuts about Alzheimer’s —forgetting words, getting lost, not remembering names, faces, or recent conversations—get represented, but without much density or complexity. While Hawking came across as multi-dimensional, Alice, even in her worst moments, is always noble, essentially intelligent despite her impairment, and Julianne Moore beautiful even at her most faded. I hate the manipulation at the end when Alice’s daughter reads her a monologue and asks Alice what it means so we can hear Alice struggle to respond ‘love;’ hell, I couldn’t tell what that monologue was about. And of course I resented the spouse’s portrayal in both book and movie as a selfish jerk.

So those are the bare bones of the review I was writing in my head when I met my daughter for supper the other night. Just the two of us, a rare treat.

“I saw Alice,” she told me as soon as we were settled in with girl drinks.

“You did?” I asked genuinely surprised. I began to launch into all the things I thought were wrong with the movie. “Ugh, and that speech she gave.”

“I loved that speech.” She also loved the actress daughter who ends up moving back.

“But you wouldn’t move home to care for Dad, would you?”

“If I didn’t have a job and it was Manhattan I might,” she laughed. In fact, she and her husband are planning to move out of Atlanta in the next year, but she’s become indignant whenever I’ve raised the thorny issue of selling our farm when it becomes too much for Ralph and me. Now she added, “Really, I would love it if you and Dad moved wherever we end up. You could babysit.”

“And you could help with Dad.”

We laughed and proceeded to have our first in-depth discussion about Ralph’s condition. About whether Ralph counts as Early Onset Alzheimer’s given that my daughter noticed changes when he was barely sixty long before the MCI diagnosis; about how tense she gets around other people because she sees Ralph’s moments of self-consciousness and anxiety and how it breaks her heart; about how people who have met him in the last ten years, including her husband, don’t realize that he has changed in some essential ways; about what to expect down the road; about my frustrations; about her fear that she might inherit the Alzheimer’s gene (“but I would never have that test.”).

We were honest and respectful and loving. I left the restaurant a little elated, went home and told Ralph what a great time the girl and I had together. Also hugged him in pure exuberance. Moments of intimacy with my kids are hard-won and I will take them whenever and for whatever reason I can.

So as for Forget Alice, forget my griping in the first paragraph.

What a great movie, huh.

Energy–His, Mine, Ours

Caregiver/Spouse Issues, , , , , , , , ,

It’s a little after noon on Sunday afternoon. Ralph is in the bedroom “resting.” He woke up at eight and we drank coffee until nine so his morning was not exactly demanding. But we are scheduled to meet friends at the movies at 2.

Resting at length in preparation for any out-of-the-ordinary activity has become the norm. He rests all morning the day he takes his art class. He rests most of the day before we go out for dinner. He does not attach his need to conserve his energy to his cognitive issues—well, he doesn’t attach any of his behavior to his cognitive issues, but I think the resting has  to do with controlling his anxiety more than a physical need.

And if it works, great. I certainly don’t fault him for needing to rest for whatever reason. But I am also aware that his need for rest affects my own in ways I don’t like exploring too carefully. Am I as energetic as I could be or am I using his lack of energy as an excuse to be less vigorous in my pursuits as well? When he goes to sleep at eight, I often stay up alone for hours wasting my time on bad television or online robot bridge, telling myself my brain is too taxed to read—it’s not. If I don’t work on revising my novel when he is resting, I tell myself I can’t concentrate because he is in the next room. It is so easy to follow his time line and energy line, to drop down a notch or two on the activity scale. It is a dangerous slope.

Partners in a long marriage either grow together or apart. Given our particular marriage’s ups and downs, it’s a pleasant surprise that Ralph’s Early Alzheimer’s has brought us together in many ways. But I need to be careful. His cognitive failings dominate much of our marriage; I need to be sure not to use him now to let things that matter slide, to avoid the sometimes difficult choice to live my life to its fullest.

Alice Takes a Short Quiz

Caregiver/Spouse Issues, daily life with MCI/Alzheimer's, , , , , , , , , ,

I used to love those self-help quizzes in magazines so now I have made up my own and taken in. I am not sure if I passed or not.

Questions:

Who did the following, A (Alice) or R(Ralph), in the last week?

  1. Who asked repeatedly where the other was going today?
  2. Who asked repeatedly what the other was doing all afternoon?
  3. Who went to an Alzheimer’s support group Friday?
  4. Who took the dog to the vet?
  5. Who could not find his/her cell phone for two hours?
  6. Who doesn’t answer the phone when called?
  7. Who answered the final Jeopardy question right?
  8. Who got in the car without putting the dog in the house yesterday?
  9. Who left the eggs boiling on the stove last night?
  10. Who noticed and turned off the stove last night?

Answers:

  1. R (Although I was only going to the gym) but also A (To remind Ralph he had a doctor appointment)
  2. A (Because I worry he just sits and smokes unless I push him to do a chore or activity); Not R (He has lost curiosity about my activities)
  3. A (Ralph refuses to go because he says one person always talks too much and he doesn’t get enough factual information)
  4. R (While I was at the support group actually; this was the first time he has taken responsibility for a chore in a while, and I was nervous about sending him alone. But he assured me that he knew the way and he did. The dog’s check up went without a hitch. The sense of normalcy was a good experience for Ralph and for me.)
  5. Well, I think that might be R and A, each on different days. (Actually I am not sure where mine is right now. Oops, there it is under an envelope on my desk.)
  6. R. (When I misplace my phone, I start calling it. When R misplaces his phone, he doesn’t notice. If I am out and checking on him, I get extremely nervous that he’s not answering. When I am the one home and he is not in the house and not answering the phone, I can get a little frantic. So far my worry has been needless, thank goodness.
  7. R (One advantage of having a husband with MCI/Early Alzheimer’s—he doesn’t lord it over me because he almost immediately forgets that he’s one-upped me)
  8. R (This was disturbing because, see 4., the dog is the area of responsibility where Ralph usually seems the most his old self; I took care of the dog without mentioning to Ralph who would have become very upset at his lapse)
  9. A (I put them on, left to check email and Ralph was the one who noticed and turned off the burner just as I was walking back into the room)
  10. R (See 9. Above.)

Answering my little quiz has been a good reminder to myself that the line between forgetfulness and Alzheimer’s related loss of memory is not always as clear. What is different is often more in the reaction. I fret while Ralph doesn’t know what he’s forgotten or that he’s forgotten. I think I may quiz myself more often to keep track of how we’re doing.

A Mountain or A Molehill of a Bad Night?

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I have been avoiding writing this entry, wondering if I can skip it, but if this is to be an honest chronicle, there’s no leaving out the unflattering, ugly and/or embarrassing parts.

Ralph fell on Friday and ended up in the emergency room. He’s fine, but the experience was unnerving and upsetting on several levels: as a reality check on our life together now, as a glimpse into our possible future, as a mirror into my reactions.

Ralph had injured his back last Monday and spent the next four days in serious pain. He did what he always has done with his back issues in the past —lay on his back with a brace and took painkillers. I brought him food and Advil, but to say I was attentive might be an exaggeration since I went into Atlanta for someone’s birthday dinner without him Tuesday night and was in and out of house the rest of the time, actually finding as many reasons to be out as I could.

By Friday he seemed much better. When I got home from the grocery story at 5-ish, he was sitting on the front porch talking on the phone to his sister. I was glad to see he was back to his usual afternoon routine but also vaguely annoyed with him for no particular reason except maybe caregiver fatigue as I schlepped in the grocery bags by myself. Minutes later while fiddling around in the kitchen, I heard a crashing noise. I assumed it was the dog, but—and here’s where the embarrassing, unflattering part starts—a thought slipped into my head along the lines of, if that’s Ralph dropping dead it serves him right for sitting out there not helping me with the groceries.

Of course, it was Ralph. He lay crumpled face down on the ground by the porch steps. He was not moving. What had I just wished on him? To twist the knife a little more, that very morning he’d asked me out of the blue, “What will you do when I die?” In response I had laughed uncomfortably and changed the subject. What if he’d had a presentiment?

He was conscious but unable to move his legs. His speech was slurred. I thought, stroke. I couldn’t and knew I shouldn’t move him. So I made the 911 call.

Ok, here comes the next embarrassing part: The EMT said that Ralph didn’t seem to have had a stroke or broken any bones, a relief of sorts, but that he smelled liquor on Ralph’s breath. I got defensive and said all we had in the house was white wine, which was true, and how much could he have imbibed in the two hours I was gone. The EMT said I shouldn’t be embarrassed if Ralph was tipsy when he fell. Right. I was more than embarrassed. I was half-hoping it was a stroke because that would be less difficult to explain than allowing my 68-year-old cognitively impaired husband get so drunk he fell off the porch.

On the 45-minute drive behind the ambulance, I called both my kids to prepare them just in case it was a stroke although I very calmly told them it probably wasn’t. Meanwhile I was composing titles for my next blog entry in my head, along the lines of From the Border of Early Alzheimer’s into the Abyss.

At the emergency room, Ralph was awake but very out of it. He had no memory of falling or riding in the ambulance and didn’t understand where he was. I panicked oh no this is going to be my life from now on. I have read so many blogs by wonderful people caring for their seriously debilitated spouses, but I wasn’t ready to be one of them.

The hospital tests clarified that Ralph had not had a stroke. And that his alcohol level was way over the legal limit. I was horrified. How had I allowed this to happen to him? Was he an alcoholic and I his enabler or was he a guy with a bad back and a worse memory who drank some wine on an empty stomach because his wife didn’t bother to make him lunch before she went out and he forgot to eat)? Either way, I was at fault. The medical staff didn’t seem very concerned—a 68-year-old man drank too much and tripped was the general consensus.

But to me and to Ralph it was a nightmare. I had never witnessed him so totally confused. And each time he asked me to explain his current situation, he became more deeply upset that his life had come to this point. “I am a man who is in control,” he repeated shaking his head.

As I drove him home minutes after he was released, he’d already forgotten we had just been at the hospital. I panicked. Was this his new memory level? I dreaded what I would be dealing with the next day and every day to come.

In the morning Ralph woke up sore, but he remembered the fall and the hospital. If anything, his memory was sharper than it has been for a while. He was mortified, worried that someone we knew had seen him in the hospital. I assured him no one had. We discussed how much he had drunk. He didn’t know but he had eaten very little and drunk on top of his meds and a lot of Advil. I explained how alcohol exacerbates cognitive impairment. He has not exactly sworn off his lite beer forever, but hasn’t had one since. He says he is more groggy/foggy than ever, but it seems to me that his memory is better and he has more energy. We are both relieved, enjoying life the way you do when you have just skirted disaster.

But for those five hours Friday night, I saw what our future might hold—Ralph’s nightmarish confusion, my cold calm covering inward fury—and it wasn’t pretty.

Joy Still Happens

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Today we went on our annual Christmas tree hunt. We have cut down a tree on the farm almost every Christmas since we moved down here.

Ralph and I still remember the first time, 25 years ago. Piled into our old Suburban with our two kids, our friend Amelia and our two dogs, we drove all over the land we had just purchased. We didn’t know our way exactly and the roads were overgrown so we got stuck several times as well as a little lost, although Ralph wouldn’t admit it. He shot mistletoe out of some very tall trees—who knew that’s where you found mistletoe—and cut down two beautiful pines, one for our family and one for Amelia’s. Then we drank hot chocolate. It could not have been more greeting card perfect.

But of course life changes. Amelia moved out of our lives. The dogs died and were replaced by several generations of new pets. The kids grew up and although they have never have missed a Christmas yet, I worry every year that this season will be our last together as a family. Then there is the change in Ralph himself. He used to be the center of activity and now often prefers the sidelines, napping when the others go off on adventures.

And it has become harder to find a decent pine. There aren’t as many out there, either because we cut down the good ones or let them grow too large. For the last few years, Ralph and I have dragged along grandkids or nieces, city kids who try to be patient but quickly get bored traipsing through fields. But this year there is no one around but the two of us.

So I expected Ralph to tell me that looking for a tree would be “too much trouble”– his current catch phrase regarding so many activities we used to enjoy. Frankly, in this case I was secretly thinking he might be right, that a bought tree, with its perfect limbs, might be a pleasant change from our usual Charlie Brown monstrosities. But Ralph surprised me.

He was eager to go out tree hunting. And he remembered for two days straight that we were going to go today. He even made sure we gassed up the truck before we started. And off we went. Although our paths were mowed during the recent wedding preparations, the grasses are back up high and it was our normal bumpy ride, but at least there was no rain and it wasn’t too cold.

Soon, not far from our pond, we noticed a tree with potential, despite a flat side. I suggested we tag it with a pink ribbon, but Ralph insisted that he would remember where it was. After a lot more driving, also jumping out of the truck opening gates and stomping through high grasses, we found another tree, a tall one in a thicket of our old cow pasture. This one I made him tag. We spotted our third possibility in the fenced pasture directly behind the house. Ralph was happy to tag this one, and I took a picture to compare to our other choices.

By now Ralph had no clue where the other two choices were—or that we had seen other potential choices at all. As he followed my directions back across the pond, we joked about his memory in a way we don’t any more. And then we agreed, almost casually, that his condition was likely to get worse. Ralph’s potential future with Alzheimer’s has become the elephant we don’t always acknowledge taking up half the room, but in that moment of acceptance, it seemed less scary.

Because we were having too much fun. Both of us. There we were, two sixty-something-year-old cynics driving around in a beat up truck debating over the perfect height and shape of straggly pine trees as if our lives depended on making sure we didn’t end up with a bare spot in the branches. And it was great.

Lately I worry that we no longer connect as equals. It bothers me that Ralph is not interested in all the issues and concepts we used to discuss/argue about so energetically. Not only has he lost his appetite for current events but what is worse, he doesn’t want to challenge me about anything more important than whether he’s taken his pills. When he talks about the dog and the weather or repeats and repeats his anxiety about some mundane issue that has long been settled, I feel myself patronizing him. Not a good feeling. I have to remind myself who he has been in his life.

But this afternoon I didn’t have to make myself remember what I used to enjoy about being married to Ralph; I simply enjoyed being with him.