Visiting My Husband

It's an odd thing to say, isn't it--"Visiting my husband." Most husbands don't need visiting and, I'm afraid, get taken for granted. But my Love, all 6' 2" and 190 lbs of his handsome self, has advanced Alzheimer's Disease at age 65. He is totally incapacitated now and doesn't know me. That's really what made it emotionally possible for me to go to Scotland; he responds to me no differently now than before I left. For a few seconds during each visit he seems to focus on my face, that's all. A friend said I am "neither wife nor widow," and that feels right on. Being away from him for three weeks, during which time he did just fine, made that feel real. (The photo is of Tom four years ago with one of his wonderful nurse-friends at the Indiana University Medical Center's Alzheimer Clinic. She's also a sometimes Parish Nurse.)


Anyway, I was massaging his feet last evening at the Friends (Quaker) Fellowship Community, a.k.a. nursing home. There's no obvious way to connect with him, so I try touch. Everybody deserves loving touch. I noticed that he now has no callouses on his feet. That seems like a little thing, almost silly. But it says a lot to me. I think of how hard he--and we--work at developing callouses: wearing the right (or right-looking) shoes, standing, walking, running, generally banging around life and paying no particular attention to those appendages down there that support us all the day long. Tom doesn't use them anymore. They just are.

And I wonder what would happen to us if we did less using and less callous-building in our lives, and more being. I wonder if our souls would become soft and innocent again.

Here's a poem by a Hoosier who made her way to Vancouver Island in British Columbia:

"Feet to Head" by Susan McCaslin

Hey, dude, give us some space and turf,

you, rumbling up there

in your bright, abstract buzz.

You could go off, incapacitated

without us down here to keep you real,

you in you bulbous, bloodless dome.

Remember, we are your contact with ground zero.

Bathe us with myrrh and balm,

massage us once in a while

and maybe we will remember you

when the two of us lie tip to toe

partnered for the long journey home.