OLD LOVERS IN LIMBO

Back and forth to the nursing home, she tirelessly rides the road between there and home.  The home they shared for 55 years, the home where they raised their three children and played with five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.  The clock ticks a relentless tick-tick-tick in the background, but she doesn't look at it or hear the passing of time.  Her entire focus in on the life form of her soulmate lost in the confines of his own mind, worn down by a disease with a name that no one wants to speak or hear.

"He still eats whatever I give him and as long as he'll eat, I'll feed him," she tells whoever asks how he's doing.  In a matter of months, he has gone from a robust, slightly overweight figure of a man who walks and talks, to a very trim, not yet skeletal, zombie-like creature who rarely speaks and cannot walk.  The awful disease, held at bay for years by trial and error combinations of drugs and research, had finally eaten through their protective barrier and run amok.  He remembers no names, no places and very little of the language he has spoken for 76 years.  But because of a powerful appetite stimulant that still can "talk" to his fried brain, he continues to chew whatever is placed in his mouth.  Blood clots in his legs forced him to bed weeks ago and most probably, that is where he will remain.

But she doesn't give up; she continues to hand feed him at every meal and coax him to draw lifegiving fluids through a straw instead of chewing it as if it were more food.  This is the man she loves, has loved since her teens and she is 76 now, too.  He is the father of her children, the keeper of their home, the patriarch of their extensive family that dearly loves him.  And he is dying....a physically fit man who farmed all his life, who worked in the great outdoors sowing, plowing and harvesting crops that he sold at market.   Then this cruel disease began to eat at his mind, nibbling bit by bit, then biting off large chunks until finally, it invaded the parts of his brain that control his physical wellbeing. 

She has taken care of him at home ever since he was diagnosed, with very little help from family or outside sources.  She stayed up nights to watch over him as he rambled and raved about their old farmhouse, then exhausted, slept with him when he finally fell asleep the next day....just to do it all over again, night after night, day after day, year after year.  She saw that he had balanced meals and took the latest medicines and took part in the latest research, to try to slow the dragon's progression, to keep it from crossing the moat around the castle.  But finally, the dragon not only crossed the moat, but burned down the castle gates with its fiery breath and entered to destroy whatever it could inside.  In spite of her careful attendance to every detail, Camelot was no more.

He became violent, completely out of control, agitated and unsure he was home, even when he was.  Having not touched a hair on her head for 54 years, he began to assault the woman he had loved for as long.  Beyond exhaustion, she finally called for help and measures were taken to have him placed where he could be treated for the aggression and the horrible hallucinations of great birds trying to claw at him and eat him.  Then there were rounds of hospital emergency rooms, treatment centers and nursing homes that sapped the last bits of dignity from him and confidence and strength from his family.