We Should All Have This

 

     I used to have a woman who looked at me like that.

     Not to compare her to a dog but she adored me that much. It was that pure and uncompromising, like sunshine itself. In nearly 14 years together, her love for, trust in and loyalty to me never wavered by so much as a micron. What else can one expect of a woman who drove 1533 miles in an old Chrysler LeBaron alone save for a sick cat dying of cancer to move in with a man she never met?

     I'll never forget the night she arrived. After navigating through the first 1532 miles in a sweltering car without air conditioning or being able to lower the windows, her poor brain was fried by the time she got to town. She was texting her mother and me that she was lost as she endlessly circled the local Stop N Shop. She just couldn't make that last mile.

     Finally, her mother, doing what mothers do, called my local police department all the way from Vero Beach, Florida and asked them to find her and guide her to my street. And they did. By the time I got to the corner, a cop pulled up, jerked his thumb behind him, rolled down his passenger window and told me, "She's right behind me." That's where we first laid eyes on each other, two car lengths back on Broad Street.

     To this day, I still look at that exact spot.

     So, she got on my street then turned left onto a side road called Loring Court, put the car in gear, bounded out and wrapped me in a bear hug that neither of us could break for 10 minutes. She literally vibrated with relief. It was only then that I truly realized what an ordeal she'd gone through.

     I look at that spot, too, and my eyes get misty.

     Yes, Barb was that kind of woman, the best one that ever walked into my life. She used to steal paper napkins from our favorite cafe. She picked up old coins from the ground and roll them up in her little taupe coin roller and redeem them when the rolls were full. She wore Chef Wear pants and men's collared shirts because they had front pockets. 

     She was perfect.

     When a person gets dementia, they have to gradually retreat from society. And their caregivers have to retreat from it, too. They call it "the long goodbye" but that works in more than one way. By default, you, too, become a hermit, at least for the rest of their life.

     Reintegration to society is next to impossible if not outright impossible. Especially when it's marred by neverending grief.

     I had to go to the local Senior Center yesterday to apply for rental assistance (RAFT). Afterwards, I was hungry and decided to go to a diner that Barb and I loved to go to. The waitress, who knew us, asked me where she was. I started blubbering like a baby and told her Barbara died. She gave me my lunch for free. I didn't intend for that to happen.

     She said her mother in law also had dementia and that had maybe days. Dementia makes the world a smaller place, people more accessible.

     And yet, we still don't know how to talk about death. It touches all of us but when called upon, we default to platitudes. Why is that?

     After my landlady's husband died of COVID over two years ago, we spoke on the phone for the first time and at one point she cried and said the hardest part was telling her husband's friends that he'd died.

     Now I know what she'd meant. I told her that, too, over the phone yesterday right after she texted me to say she was starting eviction proceedings against me. I told her I'd applied for rental assistance. Didn't matter, she said. She was also thinking of selling the house. So my immediate future is either eviction or getting priced out of my only home of 15 years, where Barb's ghost lingers. It's only a matter of which comes first. I cried again over the phone. You want to know what my emotional landscape looks like? Think 1906 San Francisco right after the earthquake.

     My eyelids are raw from all the times I've had to wipe the tears from my eyes since yesterday.

     Monday I made an appointment with a cardiologist for tomorrow but it seems like a pointless exercise in artificial self preservation.

     But once, for a magical moment in my life, I had a girl who looked at me like that. So my life wasn't all bad.