I wish I knew

Cecil Cartwright, our 85 year old neighbour across the street is a “Conky Joe” – a white Bahamian. His grandfather jumped a British naval ship in the Caribbean (how long ago would that be?) and keeps us laughing with stories about Long Island in the Bahamas where giant roosters haunted graveyards, kids’ pets were mules and pigs and living in caves during the hurricanes was standard. Big and gentle, he comes over for visits with a hoe as his cane, scraping off the weeds as he goes down his driveway. He lost his driver’s license a few years ago which is the kiss of death if you happen to live in the country.

Cecil’s 83 year old wife, Helen woke up blind as a bat two years ago and now has Alzheimer’s. She slips out of the house occasionally, and starts calling for TOM! until I realize she’s yelling, “MOM!”

"MOM!”, “MOM!”, “MOM – WHERE ARE YOU?” Oh dear. Last week, it was wildly windy and I was working out in the front garden. I heard, TOM! (MOM!) and looked up. Helen was in a pink furry bathrobe that was flapping open and shut in the breeze revealing a white slip. She was weaving towards the road with a long wooden staff assisting her journey, her long matted hair trailing out behind her, looking all the world like Gandalf the Gray. A guy who was cutting their grass rescued her and gently led her back to the house.

You can’t keep a good woman down. Even after she lost her site, Helen liked to CUT THE LAWN! Cecil would start the lawnmower and she would weave and bob in wild designs through the grass. Every now and then the mower would slam into a rock or stump and shriek to a halt. Cec would start it up again and away she’d go.

The other day when I was putting out the garbage by the road, Helen came wandering down her driveway with a handful of sticks. She didn’t know where she should put them. Then she started to cry. “There’s been a death in my family. I just found out my mother died.” I said I was sorry, but she kept going on and was so despondent that I told her that maybe she had just forgotten that her mother had died a long time ago. “No,” she said, “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

Poor Cecil. He hears this ALL DAY. And dear Helen – she LIVES this all day.

Alzheimer’s is funny – meaning insidious. On one hand, many of us strive to live in the moment, but many people with this very sad condition keep living a moment that may be one of their worst.

My mother had Alzheimer’s. She always knew us (and never looked for her mother) but didn’t know that you’d just been in the room 2 minutes ago. She loved music and when she was in the later stages, I downloaded a ton of 40’s music that she could listen to on a little IPod machine that the nurses could turn on. When we first played it for her, I told her that I was going to play a song and ask her who sang it. I’d never before heard the first song I played for her, and asked her to Name That Tune. “I Wish I Knew”, she said. I thought she didn’t know the name, and looked on the IPod. The title was “I Wish I Knew”. I was amazed. 

I played the next one and I could see she was trying to remember it. She looked at me and gave a little smile and said, “I wish I knew!”