Getting ready to leave means leaving Tom

Odd, isn't it, that one can miss a person who doesn't speak to you, or even look at you when you're right there. But I'll be missing Tom as I venture off again to Celtic lands. It feels rather precarious, wondering if he'll be the same when I get back, and wondering if something cataclysmic might happen to him while I'm across the sea. "Into your hands, O Merciful Savior, we commit your servants...."

I said in my initial blog entry that I hoped the sabbatical time would help me make sense of Alzheimer's disease, or at least Tom's Alzheimer's. Part of that process was writing some poems. Here are a few. Please note: I'm not done yet!

No. 1
In my juicy dream
I am making love.

I wake to the alarm
but quickly push “snooze”
and whisper to Tom, “Shoulder?”

He extends his left arm.
I lay my head on his broad
chest and shoulder.
He bends his arm around me.
I murmur, “This is my favorite
place in all the world.”

And I forget
he can’t make love.
I forget
he can’t form sentences.
I forget
he can’t bathe or dress.
I forget
his Alzheimer’s.

The morning air from the cracked window is cool,
but the warmth of this ample comforter is still real.

No. 2
The rain in my life
is the reign of Alzheimer’s.
It reigns and reigns and reigns.

Why, for God’s sake?
What will be upturned
by this
constant
pelting?

The sparse light does not permit far vision.
Nothing is clear—
not the meaning,
not the cost,
not the gift, if there be one.

If there is a horizon
it is nearly erased
as grey sky and
grey water
meld.

I slosh through mud.
Possibly insane, I
choose
not to come out of the rain.
Nor could I:
There is no shelter.

“This reign is not eternal,” I say.
“Something of value will show up.
Something will be revealed.
Something—
Something—
for God’s sake!"

No. 3
"It’s time for me to go,” I say.
Tom has not been looking at me, and
now his eyes turn further away.

“May I give you a kiss?” I ask.
He doesn’t respond—not with eyes or voice or lips.

I caress his head as he sits in the wheelchair,
and whisper low into his ear,
“I love you.”

At the door of this locked
down nursing home
I punch
the sequence of numbers into the keypad
to release the lock that will
let me go.

Once escaped, tears
drip down my cheeks.
They do not stop
as my heart turns
over and over
the impossibility
that our love has come to this.

I know I must leave him
to his world of hallucinations
in the care of others.

But how can I leave what inhabits my heart?


No. 4
At age twenty-one, I reported for work
in my starched nursing uniform,
crisp white cap, and
heavy shoes.

The cranky arthritic in 1321
had a visitor.
Her husband hung a sign on the knob
of her hospital door:
“Do Not Disturb.”
He entered her room, then
carefully closed the door behind him,
claiming the sweet privacy
reserved for young lovers
in perfect bodies.

At age sixty-three,
I crawl onto the hospital bed
next to my demented husband,
and do my best
to spoon.

Behind the curtains, drawn at mid-day,
I feel the warm wetness
of his incontinent urine
that spreads over my abdomen
penetrating my zipped jeans.

No. 5

On the black bars of the fire escape
just outside Annemarie's tall, naked window
are rows of last night’s snow.
Heavy and not-quite-white,
it drips. It even tries to slide off,
disrupting the symmetry.
It can’t decide if it’s snow or water.
Does it need to?
It will all join the ocean
in due season.

Tom sits in his wheelchair
deciding nothing--
not whether to have ice in his water,
or lemon.
Not whether to wear a red sweater or
a shirt that sports “Life is good,”
not discerning if the voices are real
or if the time is now.

It is now all the time
and the place is always here, not there.
My Love is quite hung between the thieves of
past and future.