The Decline and Fall of Practically Everything
Norma and I aren't on the best of terms as I put her to bed tonight. As happens more commonly now, she's balked at taking her evening pills. I've had a long day and need to use the bathroom. None of that registers in her closed world. I get her a fresh Coke and divide the pills into clusters of three so she can take them quickly. Or so I think. She holds the Coke and begins to sip from it while I take one cluster and hold them up to her mouth—which she refuses to open.
“Come on, honey,” I urge. “Let's get this damn thing over with. You have to take these.”
“I don't have to,” she says through clenched teeth. I toss the pills back down on the table
Fine! Just fuck it!,” I say. It is not fine, and I don't fuck it, but I have made my point, however lamely. I stalk off to the bathroom, thinking I'll try again when I come back. But I don't. I'm not up to serial defeats tonight.
When I wheel her into the bathroom to get her into pajamas, we are both still tight-jawed. But she is so helpless, so dependent on any lightness I can seep into her splintered world, that I force myself to see her through a lover's eyes. That always works long enough for me to cool down. About an hour into her sleep, she wakes up and calls to me. But she forgets what for. I ask her if she wants a cookie. She says she does. I get her a chocolate chip one from the kitchen and sit beside her bed, feeding it to her bit by bit as she lies back on her pillow with her eyes closed. We listen throughout to Willie's “Stardust”--four times before she sleeps soundly—and let it take us to a younger world, where all the waists are slim and every night is moonlit.
Later, she awakens again and asks me to sit with her. She tells me she never feels good. As I try to discover why, the elliptical phrases start-- “I want to . . . ,” “I wish we could . . .,” “Where are . . . .” They are tantalizing thoughts she never completes. But she tries so hard to squeeze out meaning that I stifle my impatience to get back to work. As unsatisfying as these fragments of thoughts are, I imagine the time will come—and maybe soon—when they are my Dead Sea scrolls from which I'll try to reconstruct those good times when she still recognized me and called me by name. She lies flat on her back, eyes closed, as I rub her shoulder. “That feels good,” she says, and I feel mildly triumphant.
To soothe her, I tell her again the story of her giving birth to our daughter Erin and how radiant and hungry she was just minutes after the delivery. She smiles and says she remembers but adds no details. On an impulse, I lean closer to her and begin singing softly “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” She lights up and actually begins singing some of the words. With other songs, the most she can muster up is spirited humming. “He sees you when you're sleeping/He knows when you're awake.” And on she sings in little exhalations of words until sleep closes in again.
It's getting harder to animate her with jokes and music. But there's still something somewhere deep inside the gray labyrinth. Earlier in the evening we watch Ray Stevens on PBS. He opens with a sclerotically jazzy version of “That Old Black Magic,” and she hums and nods to it without fully engaging. Steven's guests are the group Restless Heart, and she seems momentarily carried away by their buoyant harmonies on “The Bluest Eyes in Texas.”
A few days back\, an “occupational therapist” from Vanderbilt comes to see us, aiming to help Norma and me make the most of such physical and mental strengths as we have left. The therapist suggests that Norma might benefit from doing simple household chores, like folding clothes or sorting the knives, forks and spoons after they're removed from the dishwasher. I tell her I'd never folded an article of clothing in my life and, thus, would be a poor supervisor for that activity. But the cutlery exercise seems within my grasp. Alas, it is not so for Norma. Faced with the basket from the dishwasher and a compartmentalized utensil rack sitting side by side, she can't even figure out how to transfer the objects from one container to the other—and she really tries.
When I ask her to turn her head to see and pick up an object to hand to me—in this case, the TV remote—she can't follow the directions. I tell her the remote's on the table at her left elbow and instead of looking there, she reaches forward to hand me a tissue from the coffee table. It's heartbreaking.
She still has a sense of humor, though, and usually gets the punch lines and sarcasm. Yesterday, quite unprompted, she looked over to where I was sitting beside her and said, “I love you.” When I assured her I felt the same toward her, she grinned and fluttered her eyelashes like the flirty heroine in a silent movie. In that same vein, we were watching a story on TV about fathers dancing in ballet classes with their kindergarten-age daughters. When one little girl was asked if her dad was a good dancer, she twisted her face in concentration, thought about it for a moment an replied with exquisite diplomacy. “Well, he's little bit good.” Norma thought that was funny. So I added, “That sort of describes my sexual performance, doesn't it?” At that, she laughed out loud.