I wrote this four days before Ken died.
I didn’t know that when I sat down to write it. I knew he was sleeping more. I knew I had his mom back in town to watch over him with me. What I didn’t know was how close we already were to the edge.
Reading it now, fifteen years later, I’m struck less by what I was losing than by what I was noticing—a pair of purple socks, a playlist with terrible timing, an empty lot on Lincoln Avenue that was a metaphor that I found terribly upsetting.
May 28, 2011
Ken has been sleeping more and more, and my keyboard clicks away; he has been sleeping 15+ hours. My mother-in-law (Mama Jo) arrived on Thursday evening after a few conversations updating her and the rest of the family in California about the recent changes I’ve noticed in Ken’s condition. It was a big relief for me to have her here. Not only have these changes necessitated more energy and greater patience than ever before, but aside from that, I wanted someone else’s eyes on the situation and on him. Maybe the changes I’ve noticed weren’t as drastic as I was thinking? Maybe I’m the one who is growing more and more confused? With his nuclear family so far away, I felt the great responsibility of keeping them up to date on changes in his condition. It was nerve-racking wondering if it was time to call them to come to Chicago. Or now? Or now? Now?
Because of my co-caregiver, I had the opportunity to take a walk today. The last one I took was mentioned in another blog about a month ago—with a house full of guests and Ken, the director of all the organized chaos. Today I was getting itchy. With him sleeping more, there isn’t much to do. Though I can sometimes dive into a project and stay distracted, today wasn’t one of those days. Though the skies looked ever-threatening as they have so often this dreary spring, I headed out for my familiar two-mile route.
What a delight that most of my iPod selections were about true love, being adrift without it, and the tragedy of love lost. Thinking about the confusion Ken has experienced lately propelled me into a public display of “ugly cry.” But I went with it, hard-blinking the tears out of my eyes while trying to keep up a rapid clip. At that point, it became more of a challenge. How fast can I walk while my eyelids squeegee the saline away? Good job, subconscious!
I’m overwhelmed. No doubt about it. Luckily, it’s rare that I can fully grasp the grand, sprawling scope of the situation. Some kind of safety valve in my brain shuts down attempts after a certain period of time. Yet there are occasions even my ever-churning brain can’t protect me from. Yesterday he threw me for quite a loop as I was putting away laundry. He called me into the living room to his bed. I was carrying his boxers and various colored socks to put away where they belong in his bathroom.
“Remind me to talk to you about socks,” he said.
Based on his recent confusion, memory problems and hallucinations, I thought we should get to it. “Let’s talk about it now,” I chirped, smiling down at him.
“The purple ones,” he said, pointing to the purple knee socks with white horizontal strips and “grippies” on the bottom, jumbled in my hands.
“What about the purple socks?” I asked.
