Widowhood

Contemplating loss amid the living loss of dementia.

When does widowhood begin? With the last fragile breath? With the final fluttered heart beat?

Or is it a process, an insidious weed infiltrating the lawn of our long marriage as shared memories of over fifty years lose their grip and slip away?

  Hairline cracks that began over twelve years ago were dismissed as “senior moments.” A book you started but managed only a few chapters — maybe you had read it before, you said. A road we had travelled many times but you weren’t sure now which way to turn. The cracks widening gradually, neighbourhood walks and bike rides becoming shorter unless I came with you. Conversations recycling, repeated questions trying my patience.

  I bring out scrapbooks of our travels to help you remember — the exhilaration of the Costa Rica zip line, the paintings in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the canoe trip on a crystal-clear Lake Louise. Family scrapbooks to trigger precious memories of the three miracles we created. The child who announced so proudly that she could “trout”, not “tread” water at her swimming lesson, the one who called refrigerators, refrigigators and pedestrians, pezidranians, the one who added a delightful “eeya” to all her early words — I was Mommeeya, you were Daddeeya.

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How helpless we felt when the child who waved goodbye so confidently and travelled the farthest for university struggled with trauma that she held tightly to herself and ultimately came home for emotional healing that eluded her. How difficult it was to fumble our way out of our dark well of grief after we made the unfathomable decision to withdraw life support after an aneurysm took her from us, often unable to reach out to each other for comfort. But we survived, the loss still an abyss but less raw over time because we have become accustomed to carrying its weight. You now, in one blessing of memory loss, seem to have mostly forgotten how doggedly she battled her demons.

  But her death took its toll. The cracks splintered faster and wider. Testing and a diagnosis and restrictions. Losing your license when your cognitive score dropped below a reportable number. Unable to understand or remember long enough to contribute to household decisions or even minor property maintenance. Needing my notes to remind you to eat the lunch I prepare when I go out for even a half day. More confused about navigating once-familiar walks or rides on your own beyond our immediate neighbourhood. Wanting to help but unable to decide if we need a knife when you set the table for dinner. Laughing at a joke you played on me more than four decades ago but unable to remember lunch with good friends or a matinee theatre performance by the evening of the same day.

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I adjust and find support with family and friends and neighbours who understand. I no longer feel guilty at occasionally finding humour in my changing reality, such as when a fellow caregiver messages after a particularly frustrating day that she wants to ship her husband to Timbuktu. I ask if there would be room for another passenger.

  I know you will one day have only scraps of memory of our time together. They’ll touch down like the autumn leaves you love to watch floating in gusts of wind. I know you will one day forget me but it will break my heart when you no longer remember our daughters. Will you forget first the one who lives only in our memory but whose death is seared into our souls, or the two you still see in real life?

Will I come to see you only as a burden? Will I stop loving the person you are and love only who you used to be? I am afraid to ask myself if that transition has already begun, when I fail to be grateful for your easy-going temperament or for the simple household tasks you still manage, or when I resent having less and less time to myself and being the sole decision maker, chauffeur, and appointments manager or when I struggle, sometimes unsuccessfully, to bite back sarcasm and anger.

  Will I become simply a woman who helps you get through each day, no more than a hired personal support worker? Is that when I am no longer a wife? Is that when I become a widow?

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Lois Hibbert is a long-time Toronto, Ontario resident who finds that “What if?” questions lead her in unexpected directions for short stories and flash fiction. She also finds healing in journaling and short memoir writing to be a road to organize and express her thoughts and feelings. She has had several flash fiction stories and short memoir pieces published.

Images:

Leaves, horizontal by Valeriia Miller

Leaves, vertical, both by Hans Isaacson