Rest In Piece

I wasn’t sure if he purposely bought me the chocolate cake, or if he just didn’t remember I was deathly allergic to chocolate? One possibility is diabolical, the other just a typical day for Jim.

He started forgetting about five years ago. In the beginning, it was endearing helping him find things and finishing his halted sentences. But as time went on, it grew frustrating for both of us. Especially as his progressive loss of memory buried him deep in a world of disconnected ramblings and long, distant stares.

Sitting in his tattered, over-stuffed recliner, memories, and mental images of my beloved husband of half a century fill the room. Jim would “hold court” from his rocking throne. I can still see him cradling each of our four children and their children in his comfy chair of leather. Many a night he would opt to sleep more hours in his chair than in our bed. I found those night to be a temporary reprieve from his thunderous nightly snoring. Oh, how I would give anything to hear those deepthroated sounds again. I can not sleep in our bed. It is too cold, too quiet, and too empty.

After such a long and devastating day, I need to lock the doors and turn off my phone. The journey of his leaving has spanned years and I have nothing left to give. Every tear has been shed. These past twenty-four hours have broken my life, my spirit, and my heart. I can still feel his frail fingers squeezing my hand tightly, just before he let go. For a brief second, our eyes met and connected in a way I haven’t felt for decades. It was like we were youthful lovers, one last time. As I pressed my face to his cool and wrinkled cheek, I’m sure I heard him whisper “cake, chocolate cake.”

Was he telling me to eat his gift of chocolate cake, or was he warning me about my chocolate allergy? I found it so odd, that his parting gift to me on the day they took him away to the Memory Care Unit, was something he had spent our married life saving me from. Jim would read every ingredient listing of almost every food I ingested. He would shout and leap at anyone who offered me the deadly food stuff. He was my savior from chocolate.

I could tell when he would briefly remember where he was being sent. He grew terribly angry. I wasn’t allowed to even hug my precious guy. He would call me horrible names when I would try and explain why he had to leave our beloved home. Then within the same breath, he would shift his mood and beg for a hug. It was exhausting and left me in tears every time.

These last few hours I have spent walking the crowded rooms of our home. Jim and I loved to antique and thrift shop to fill the days of our uneventful retirement. I had my first laugh in weeks, as I could almost hear the kids moaning with our every new acquisition. As his cognition faded, his choices of “stuff” he could not live without, grew more random. It was his favorite find, the nineteen fifty-eight record “Johnny Be Good,” that I am holding close to my heart. I have another purpose for his beloved treasure.

I am tired, so very tired of it all. I need to rest, and his over-stuffed chair calls to me. I curl up and stroke the arm rests that still hold his body’s indentation. I am hungry from this long day and the old Chuck Berry record makes the perfect plate to hold the piece of chocolate cake I have kept frozen all these years…