Clothespins

Before her frail days, Aunt Belle had been a powerhouse - raising a family of six boys and two girls, managing a working tree farm, seeing to all the details of everyday life with efficiency and skill. She rose early to feed chickens and milk cows, labored long into the night to balance books, and in between found time to feed, clothe, and shelter her husband and family. She laughed often and never complained.

Life overtook her without warning one fine Monday morning as she hung the wash and suddenly couldn't remember the word for clothespins. She laughed it off as forgetfulness, Something a woman of my age is certainly entitled to! she told my grandmother, and went about her business. A few evenings later, she forgot to make dinner and a week or so later she got lost in the woods she had grown up in, not recognizing her own daughter who found her curled up next to a pine tree and crying. She began wandering into the village, asking directions to places no one had heard of, smiling and singing snatches of nursery rhymes to herself, sometimes barefoot, sometimes carrying a basket of apples that she would offer to sell for a nickel. Kind hearted friends and neighbors would come to her aid, locating one of her children or leading her gently home - sometimes they just stayed nearby, keeping an eye on her until her husband Peter arrived, at a loss as to how to talk to her to through this growing mist of confusion and lost memory. She had moments, sometimes whole days, of clarity and clear thinking and became the woman she had been but as the months passed, such times became more and more rare, until Peter reluctantly called the childen home to be with her. Even though the responsibility was shared, the stress, worrry and guilt took their toll and the family began to fragment and lose structure, the dementia was unpredictable, not well understood and fearfully strong, requiring more patience and tolerance than Peter or the children could sustain.

Belle herself - still lucid enough, often enough - knew only that things were going dreadfully wrong and that she couldn't stop or correct it. She felt compromised and a burden, murkily trying to struggle through her days and remember the basics but more often lost and frustrated, not sure of something as simple as where her next few footsteps might lead. She seemed to better at night when she and Peter would sit quietly in the orderly little kitchen but sometimes she wept and could not say why. On those nights, he put her to bed early and lay next to her until she fell asleep, hoping for rest, peaceful dreams and a better tomorrow, praying for strength to face it.

Five years to the day that she had forgotten what clothespins were called, Belle went into Dalhousie, into the hands of mental health professionals. It's just for a little while, Peter assured her as the children said their goodbyes, I promise it's just for a little while. Of course it wasn't and he could only desperately hope that she didn't know it or would forgive and maybe in time forget. For the first time, he prayed that the dementia would not let her go and that she would find some kind of contentment and peace. He visited every week, spending every spare minute with her and bringing the children and grandchildren whenever he could but seeing only a stranger with a false smile and sad eyes.

Strange how often in the battle between strength and frailty, frailty so often wins.