Talk around the dinner table has been something I’ve valued since I was a little girl trying to get a word in at family dinners with my parents and five siblings. It was important to have interesting things to say. It was important to listen and respond to other family members.
Adrian and I continued this tradition when we got married in 1981. I had a daughter and he had four sons from his first marriage, so our table was full in the early days.
But children grew up or were already grown up and went off on their own paths. We were soon just two, with interruptions when one of the kids came to visit or rejoined our household periodically.
Adrian had a busy, independent life and so did I. At dinnertime, we got to tell the stories of our day, the gossip we had heard, or plans we were making. We talked about the kids and other relatives. We talked about books and movies, a class we were giving or taking. We talked about anything and everything.
Until Adrian’s dementia took away his words.
Dinnertime became quieter and more stressful. I tried to fill the silence with stories about my day in the studio, but found it more and more difficult to keep up that cheerful patter.
“It’s so quiet,” Adrian said at one meal.
I took his comment as a criticism, and rushed to fill the gap. But I think now that he was making an observation, not a critique.
Too often I would take his simple observations as criticism or complaint.
“These socks don’t work,” he would say when he couldn’t get them on his feet.
He was right. They didn’t work for him. But I would rush out and buy new socks.
I asked one of his sons to bring socks when he came to visit, because this son knew the best place to get comfortable clothes. When he arrived and announced that he had socks for his father, Adrian said, “I have too many socks already.”
His son threw the new socks in the garbage.
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We all rushed around looking for solutions to the difficulties Adrian was facing as his limbs, his eyesight, and his mind deteriorated.
We were all disappointed when our plans and programs and purchases failed to help.
I was aggravated by the extra work and expense some of these “solutions” required. A visit to a specialist who couldn’t help us. A new computer Adrian couldn’t operate. An expensive vision aide that the VA wouldn’t pay for.
Three of us bought him vests with lots of pockets to help him keep track of his several pairs of glasses, his pens and notebooks. Each vest would seem perfect initially, but after a few days Adrian would say, “It doesn’t work.”
I took him to every clothing store in Ithaca looking for a winter coat.
Zippers wouldn’t zip. Buttons wouldn’t button.
“Let me do that for you.”
“I need to be able to do it myself.”
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I bought special plastic dishes to make it easier for him to scoop up his food. I cut up his salad into little pieces.
A man who had always had a good appetite, taking second and third helpings, now left half the food on his plate.
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One time our friend John was eating dinner with us, and I was telling him about something that had happened that day in the studio.
Adrian said, “You don’t tell me things any more. You tell John.”
Of course I tell John, because John will demonstrate that he gets what I’m telling him, and John will respond in a meaningful way.
Adrian’s observation cut into my heart.
That is the nature of Alzheimer’s disease. It cuts into all our hearts.
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One cold morning as I struggled to help him put on his boots and zip up his jacket, Adrian said, “I don’t want to spend another winter in Ithaca.”
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He didn’t.