SURFIN' SAFARI SUMMER THREE - DAY TWELVE - (Venice Staycation) - July 31, 2021


Anna made it out on Safari.

Her wandering around the grounds of our Venice staying place was becoming problematic, so I lashed her to a bucket seat and zipped out to the Marina, just five minutes away.

There was no plan to surf because of the incessant meandering; just a notion to set her free on the sand and be close and present.

Her response was pure surrender to the ocean's sound mind massage. She dropped to the sand and turned her face to the sun, soothed.

The pleasure and relief in her face were truly mine.

"Why don't you surf?" she uttered the first complete sentence directed at me in years now.

"Really? You won't wander?"

"No, I am fine."

The illness is not linear. Sometimes they come back. At the beginning, these bits of fool's gold upset one for the false hopes they raise. Now they are 100-karat treasure. A rare chance to be with someone you lost for just a little bit.

I slid into the water and peeled off six quick rides. That is a sentence I could not have written even six weeks ago, which should provide an idea of my continued growth.

Then I bobbed on the board, watched my wife relax and soak up the beauty that is free.

The caregiver or lover can recount what happens in the objective world, but not in the patient's.

How brutal her struggle has been and with no way to share. How many humiliating moments, confusions, phantom conjurings, and misunderstandings have vexed and tormented her?

In 2019, she was fit and pert and affecting the same way of walking that beguiled me on our blind date.

Now, she is slumped in her shoulders and her jaw juts out more than it should. She is some 15 pounds heavier than her usual weight. She is gray and double-chinned.

But mostly, she is so tired from her befuddled fight; of pills, and side effects, of strange looks and sour snickering.

To stay the person Anna needs me to be, to interact with her in ways familiar to us as a couple, I have ready made mind images of who she was for projection onto the shadow of her that is left to me.

When she is open to affection I tell her I know that she is in there, the person I loved and who she longs again to be.

"I know you are in there."

Her eyes respond that she is; become the eyes of that same woman and they tell me she is trying, but just can't get out.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Organizing a Past

Image
ORGANIZING A PAST. Bathing and helping my wife in the bathroom is nothing that ever comes easy, but it’s a breeze in comparison to the task of organizing her dresser. This is what they call a “Fiddle Box” in Alzheimer’s parlance. Even a full-time caregiver is limited to what can be done with a person who has lost the ability to focus. The Fiddle Box is a place a patient can be left alone to spend hours screwing things up without doing much harm. For Anna, this is an altar at which she stands endlessly moving bits of her life around willy-nilly; expensive jewels, gloves of Spanish leather, scarves from India. My wallet is missing of a sudden, so this is one of those times when order must be restored and to do so is to pass through our life together. There are a thousand garments in different storage places around the apartment. I am trying to liquidate but can’t bring myself to throw away anything she designed. Anna was a prolific fashion designer. She not only had her signature Anna Hu...
Read more

SURFIN' SAFARI SUMMER ONE - DAY TWO - June 15, 2019

Image
      We went out to the Marina late afternoon. It was cold and windy and the water was mushy and I didn't want to go in, but have decided it's not a true Surfin' Safari Summer outing unless I get beat up by the ocean a bit. Managed to work into a wave that I'm still thinking about hours later.   We took Washington Blvd. out to the coast and stopped for lunch at an Oaxacan place. We shared a "Tlayuda." It is hard to make the case that Los Angeles is a handsome sort of city, but there are pockets where the best elements of Southern California are assembled to charming effect. This spot is one of them.  
Read more
THREE SURFIN’ SAFARI SUMMERS: In the summer of 2019, three years after my wife Anna Huling-Siciliano was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, it became clear that I was losing her. Time was precious, health precarious, money short, and I decided to mine the riches of Southern California and launch a defiant series of regional Surfin’ Safaris as health-driven, couple-shared adventures out of the mausoleum our home had become. As a family we’d always been beachgoers and it seemed a safe bet for my wife who was slowly losing her mind. She could sit on a blanket - as she always had - while I surfed. Things didn't work out to be so neat and clean, but that's the story. Reporting being of a second nature to me, I concocted Facebook posts after each outing through which I intended to keep friends and family apprised of Anna’s condition, and to put them at ease about her quality of life (ie; how I was treating her). Of course, others could read the posts, which were grouped under the ti...
Read more