A Vow to Cherish (8 page)

S
hortly after ten o’clock one night, the phone rang. John was in the den watching the news. Ellen had gone to bed half an hour before, claiming exhaustion. He grabbed the remote and turned down the volume, then picked up the cordless phone with his other hand. He punched Talk, hoping the extension in their room hadn’t awakened Ellen.

“John?”

“Yes?”

“John, hi. This is Carolyn Linmeyer. Is Ellen there?”

Carolyn was the principal at Calypso Elementary.

“Well, yes, but she’s gone to bed. I can wake her if you need to talk to her.”

Carolyn cleared her throat, sounding decidedly nervous. “No, no…Actually, it’s you I need to talk to. I just…well, I wanted to make sure Ellen wasn’t standing right there.”

John’s palms went clammy, and he felt the adrenaline begin to flow. He could have written the script for Carolyn’s next words. They chilled him just the same.

“John, this is really difficult for me. I’m not sure how to put this, but…Ellen has been having some real problems at school.” There was a long pause on Carolyn’s end.

John forced the recliner into its upright position and pushed himself to his feet. The silence dragged between them as he paced the length of the room. He felt cruel for putting the burden on Carolyn, but he was at a loss how to respond. Finally, he managed to form a sentence. “What kind of problems, Carolyn?”

“Well, frankly, I’m worried about Ellen. She seems like she’s under a lot of pressure lately. I don’t know how to describe it, but she just isn’t herself. Not at all. I don’t want to alarm you, but…she’s done some really…well,
strange
things the last few weeks. I know this will sound crazy, but she’s even gotten lost in the hallways at school—more than once. She forgets to send her class down to lunch….”

John stopped pacing. He shook his head against the receiver and closed his eyes.

Carolyn’s voice droned on. “Yesterday in a staff meeting she just blanked out when I asked her a question. It was like she didn’t even hear me. She just sat there and stared at me, even after I repeated the question. It was very uncomfortable, very odd. Some of the other teachers questioned me about it later. I’m not sure Ellen was even aware of what happened.”

Carolyn’s voice picked up steam as she recited a litany of Ellen’s violations. She finally caught her breath and her voice turned contrite. “I hope I’m not out of line, John, but we’re all very concerned about her. And it seems to be getting worse. I—I just felt like you needed to know.”

John slumped back into his chair, struggling with what to say next. He had put Carolyn in an awful predicament. He was her boss, and she had been forced to tell him that his wife was incompetent. He and Ellen had agreed they would not tell anyone else about her diagnosis until it was absolutely necessary. It seemed that time had come.

Feeling like a traitor, he took a deep breath and plunged in. “Carolyn, I’m sorry this has put you in such an uncomfortable position. I’d like this to stay completely confidential until Ellen and I can discuss it, but I feel you deserve to know what’s going on here.” He paused, trying to decide where to begin. “Do you remember last March when Ellen took those three days of leave?”

“Yes.” Curiosity and concern were mixed in her voice.

“Well, Ellen had been having some problems with her memory, some problems sleeping…some other symptoms. Our doctor sent her to a specialist. She went through some extensive testing. She was in the hospital those three days…and what they came up with…Well, they think Ellen has Alzheimer’s disease.”

“Oh, John! Oh no. I can’t believe it. I am so sorry. But…she’s so young!”

“I know. It usually doesn’t strike people Ellen’s age, but nevertheless, that’s what they think we’re dealing with. I know we should have told you sooner, Carolyn. It wasn’t right to make you deal with this. Things have been bad enough here at home. It was foolish of me to think they’d be any better at school. I…I guess I haven’t wanted to admit just how serious this is getting. I’m so sorry, Carolyn. I’m sorry this has fallen on you. But…well, Ellen didn’t want to tell people yet. We’re…we’re struggling to keep things as normal as possible.”

“Oh, I understand. Oh, John, I can’t tell you how sorry I am. This is just terrible.”

“It has been pretty devastating.”

At that moment, he made a decision. He moved to his desk on the other side of the room and pulled out the chair. It seemed so strange for him to be making plans that would alter Ellen’s life forever, without even discussing it with her. But he knew what he had to do.

He raked a hand through his hair. “This is going to be very difficult for Ellen, but I think it would be best for everyone concerned if we get a substitute for her the rest of the week and—” His voice caught and he faked a cough to hide his rising emotion. “I think we should start looking for a replacement immediately. I could never forgive myself if…well, if anything happened.”

Carolyn started to protest, but John spared her the halfhearted attempts. It was obvious there were no other options.

“We need to be very sensitive how we present this to Ellen’s class. It won’t be easy to explain to second graders. I’ll trust you to handle that, Carolyn. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to call me. Maybe we can buy some time with a substitute and wait until next week to tell everyone. That’ll give me a chance to break the news gently to Ellen.”

“Oh, John, I can’t imagine what you must be going through. Both of you.”

“I appreciate your concern, Carolyn. I know it wasn’t easy for you to call me. I shouldn’t have let it go so long.”

“I don’t know what to say…I think I’m still in shock. But please, please know that we’ll be praying for you both. And the kids, too.”

“Thank you, Carolyn.” He was touched and his voice broke. “That means a lot.”

John laid the phone down and sat at the desk, unmoving. From the other end of the room, the sound of the TV sportscaster droned on and on, the volume barely audible.

How could he have let this go on? He had put Ellen’s coworkers in a thorny position. He had forced Carolyn to make this difficult phone call, had possibly even put children in danger.

Was he blind? Couldn’t he see that Ellen was long past the stage of being able to do her job safely? He would never have forgiven himself if he’d allowed a tragedy to happen because of his misjudgment. He had put his own job in jeopardy with his foolish—Was it denial? Is this what denial was like? He’d been so blind!

Finally he got up, switched off the TV and climbed the stairs to their attic bedroom. His feet were like lead, and his bones felt a hundred years old. He tried to pray. He knew he needed strength he didn’t possess, but his lips could form only one word—
please.

Ellen lay curled up in bed, clutching the blankets under her chin. Even in sleep her fists were clenched, and her face wore an expression that was almost a grimace. There was no peace for her, even in her dreams. John watched her chest rise and fall under the layers of quilts. He wished he could crawl into bed beside her and never wake up.

Ellen cried the next morning when John told her about Carolyn’s phone call. He sat on the bed beside her, caressing her face, as if his warm touch could soften the blow of his words. She saw in his eyes that it killed him to have to reveal the humiliating things that were being said about her at school.

But in a moment of clarity, she also realized that she would never have accepted his gentle ultimatum—that she simply could not teach any longer—if he had not given her the stark truth. She had always been strong and self-assured. She wasn’t used to having John make decisions for her. A year ago she would have argued with him—perhaps even defied him and gone to work anyway. But now she could only weep.

How many more things would be taken away from her before this was all over? She was just beginning to grasp the reality that her future had been stolen from her. And now her present had been taken as well.

With mournful reluctance, she was letting go of her dreams of watching her children grow and marry, of enjoying the grandchildren they would have given her. She had said goodbye to the dreams she and John shared of traveling together.

Now she needed to tell John goodbye, as well. The single redeeming thing she had discovered in the chasm of this disease was that she had been given an opportunity that most deaths did not allow. She had been given a chance to say goodbye, to voice all the things that death too often left unsaid. As she felt herself gripped ever tightly by the claws of dementia, she began to feel panicked that she might let that opportunity slip away, that she would be swallowed by the abyss before she had declared her love for John—her precious John.

Somehow, today, seeing him so vulnerable and broken as he gave her the news about Carolyn’s call, Ellen knew it was time.

She dried her tears on the sleeve of her nightgown and sat up in bed, reaching for John. He put his arms around her and pulled her to himself. She burrowed into his chest.

In words that she realized were neither eloquent nor precise, she tried to make him understand her sorrow for what they were losing, and the deep love she’d always felt for him.

“John…John. Oh, how I’ve loved you. I…I’m so sorry for this. I’m so sorry to…to…” In her mind, the word
disappoint
was sharp and clear, but she could not get it to move from her brain and form on her lips. She felt the frustration begin to rise, but she forced it back and pushed on.

“You’ve been so good, John. So good to me…to the kids. I…I can’t believe this is happening to us…I can’t…” The tears overtook her again.

John stroked her cheek and tried to quiet her with gentle murmurs of “Shh. Shh. Shh.”

“No, John. No! Don’t hush me. I want to tell you. I want to love you. I want…I want…” The familiar fog of confusion began to creep up on her, and desperately she struggled to finish her thought. “Please, John. Don’t forget me. Don’t let the kids forget me. Please, John, will you tell my grandchildren about me…tell them how much I would have loved them.”

John squeezed her so tightly she winced in pain. Yet the pain gave comfort somehow.

His voice in her ear was gravelly with emotion. “Ellen, how could I ever forget you? You’re the love of my life. Don’t you know that, honey? I could never forget you,” he whispered.

“I do know it. I do.” The fog grew thicker, and Ellen let it overtake her. She knew she had made him understand, and now she rested in the shelter of his arms.

T
heir secret was out. The first time John went to a basketball game after Ellen quit teaching, he discovered that the whole town of Calypso seemed to have heard the news. “Ellen Brighton has Alzheimer’s.” It screamed like a newspaper headline.

As he and his friend Alexander Billman, the high school principal, made their way into the gymnasium, John was stopped by two teachers collecting admission fees at the entrance.

“I’m so sorry to hear about Ellen, Mr. Brighton.” Jody Denton’s eyes reminded John of the scrawny puppy the boys had brought home a few years back.

He hadn’t let them keep the dog, and Ellen had made him feel guilty for it. Now he squirmed under Jody’s sad gaze, feeling an emotion akin to that old guilt. Maybe they didn’t think he should be here in light of Ellen’s situation.

Beside Jody, Marsha Sprague added her condolences with those same droopy puppy-dog eyes.

He wanted to tell them that Ellen was home, happily working on a scrapbook when he’d left the house, and seeming more normal than she had in days. A startling thought pricked his conscience: maybe he
should
have stayed home. Who knew how many more nights he and Ellen would have when she was “herself.”

He mumbled a thank-you and picked up a program. Alexander was waiting for him at the bottom of the bleachers. He gave his friend an embarrassed shrug, and followed him up the bleachers two steps at a time. But even though he tried to avoid eye contact, as he made his way up the bleachers, he was greeted with half a dozen more offers of sympathy.

“You’ve been in our prayers, John.”

“Sure sorry to hear the news. Hang in there, buddy.”

“We’re thinking about you.”

He merely nodded his acknowledgment. He did appreciate their concern and sympathy, but it was as though people already considered Ellen dead. He hated it.

Finally he extricated himself from the murmurs of sympathy and made his way down the row where Alexander was saving him a seat.

While the crowd around him cheered the double-overtime game, John watched the action in silence. He rose with the crowd, taking his cues from Alexander, but when the buzzer sounded, he couldn’t have told anyone the final score.

“Everything okay, man?” Alexander asked, as they walked to the parking lot afterward.

“I’m fine.”

Alexander clapped a hand on John’s shoulder, then quickly removed it. “If you want to talk, you know I’m here.”

Alexander had lost his wife to cancer five years earlier. John knew his friend understood what he was going through better than most.

He forced a note of cheer into his voice. “Thanks, Alex, but I’m okay.”

Maybe someday he’d feel like talking about it, but tonight his thoughts were too raw to be expressed.

The following week, John brought Ellen to a basketball game with him. Now, strangely, he caught people turning away, avoiding his eyes and whispering behind their hands as he and Ellen passed.

From then on it seemed that if people couldn’t avoid running into the Brightons altogether, they would stumble through uncomfortable, halting conversations aimed at John, and all but ignoring Ellen.

“I feel like a leper,” she told John one night after they’d been obviously shunned by some acquaintances at a restaurant.

He understood. He was leprous by association. At the office, a tangible hush descended on any room he entered. He didn’t miss the sorrowful whispers that followed him down the hall or the street downtown.

The doctors had said to keep things as normal as possible for Ellen. They hadn’t mentioned that this would be impossible to do once everyone knew her plight.

Sandra was a godsend. She offered Ellen sincere sympathy, then proceeded to cheer her up with her offbeat sense of humor. Ellen’s friend somehow made it okay to joke about the crazy things Ellen did, to talk when she needed to—on the days she was able to articulate her thoughts—and to be silent without discomfort when words were too difficult.

John found himself looking forward to the evenings when Sandra visited. It was good to converse with someone who could give him a simple answer without a struggle. She became a buffer between John and Ellen, defusing the frustration they felt in trying to communicate with each other.

And Sandra could always make him laugh. He liked the way she made him feel. There was precious little laughter in his house these days.

John sat at the kitchen table dressed for work in a suit and tie. The sun had awakened him earlier than usual, so he was enjoying a rare second cup of coffee with the morning newspaper. The sun was rising earlier each day and spring was making itself evident with a myriad of signs. The forsythia bush outside the kitchen window burgeoned with fat ocher buds. If the temperature rose into the sixties as the forecast predicted, the bush would be a riot of yellow by the time he got home from work.

He was struck by the irony of it all. Such incongruity. The earth was bursting with new life, while Ellen was fading away. The days became longer as her memory grew shorter. New birth exploded in the world all around him, but in his home, life slowly decayed.

He had spent every day of the past three months regretting they had ever told anyone that Ellen had Alzheimer’s. It seemed that the day they admitted the truth, she had begun a helpless slide down the cliff of insanity.

He knew his thoughts were irrational, but he felt sure that had they kept their secret, somehow it would not have become the grisly reality it now was.

In a strange reverse of nature, Ellen became more childlike as each day passed. She was temperamental and impatient—the total opposite of her true personality. It was like living with a stranger. A stranger he didn’t particularly like.

Ellen wandered about the house with no direction and seemingly no goal. John brought her books from the library, but after reading only two or three pages, she lost interest.

She developed a strange habit of hoarding things, hiding small objects throughout the house. She packed tea bags, still in their paper wrappers, into her jewelry box. She took pens and pencils from the desk by the phone and tucked them under the cushions on the sofa.

If John caught her in the act of squirreling away some mundane treasure, it angered her. So now when he came upon her secret caches, he put the contents away without comment. Two calculators were still missing from a desk drawer, and yesterday his favorite tie tacks and his wedding band had disappeared from the valet on his dresser. His wedding ring was loose, and he wore it only occasionally. They had never replaced the inexpensive bands they’d exchanged at their wedding, so the ring was valuable only in sentiment, but he hoped she hadn’t hidden it too well.

With John’s prodding, Ellen managed to keep the laundry done and the house fairly tidy. For the first time in the busy years since she’d become a teacher, she seemed to take pleasure in these familiar, methodical tasks. But John did most of the cooking. Ellen had ruined many meals before they’d decided the kitchen was best left to him.

Besides, he was afraid for her to use the stove. Just yesterday she’d left a pot of soup simmering on the stovetop until it boiled almost dry. He had smelled it the minute he stepped into the house. Ellen was in the next room, sorting through some collection of worthless treasures.

“Ellen? There’s something burning. You left a pan on the stove!”

She looked calmly up at him as if he’d just commented on the weather. “Oh. I did?”

“Yes. Didn’t you smell it?”

She sniffed the air. “No. I don’t smell anything.”

“Well, it’s there. Come and look. You could have burned the house down.”

“Well, I didn’t mean to,” she huffed. “You don’t have to get so angry.”

He just shook his head and went to clean up the mess.

So now he had taken over the kitchen, too. It was a difficult adjustment for both of them. Ellen had always loved to cook, and John, though he’d become comfortable in the kitchen, had plenty of things he’d rather do. Sometimes he felt like he was caring for a toddler.

John hired a woman to come in once a week and do the heavy cleaning, but he made every effort to involve Ellen in the everyday household tasks. She rode with him to the grocery store, and he asked her for suggestions when they planned menus and made shopping lists. In truth, it would have been infinitely easier to do it by himself, but he remembered the doctor’s exhortation that he allow her to do as much as she could for herself for as long as possible.

The doctor had said John should be grateful Ellen was still able to care for her physical needs, but it seemed to him that she had regressed at an alarming rate. Her memory seemed to fade daily—especially her recall of things they had done or discussed just moments before.

Brant called one night and talked to his mother for half an hour. Twenty minutes later Ellen turned to John and wondered aloud, “We haven’t heard from any of the kids in ages. Why don’t they ever call anymore?”

She grew apathetic and listless, sleeping late and retiring early. The
joie de vivre
that had been so much a part of her personality was discernible only in rare, fleeting glimpses. John tried to keep their life busy and stimulating, but Ellen seemed content to sit at home night after night. She’d had some embarrassing moments of forgetfulness and clumsiness in public, and though she denied it, John felt certain part of her reluctance to be with their friends—or in any public setting—was fear of further humiliation.

She went through periods of deep depression when she seemed barely able to pull herself out of bed in the morning. John tried to get her to talk about her feelings, to get her pent-up anger and fears out in the open, but the frustration of trying to voice her feelings only made matters worse.

He prayed with her—for healing sometimes, but more often for patience and peace. And for
time.

Though she never said so, John sensed that Ellen was angry with God. He didn’t blame her. If he were honest with himself, his faith had been shaken, too. Not that he’d doubted God’s existence for a minute. Even before he’d given his life to the Lord, John had always believed in the concept of God. He’d never understood how man could see nature—the beauty of the landscape, the perfection of the workings of the human body, the amazing cycle of life—and not believe in God on some level. But now, in some ways, it would have been easier if he had lost all faith. It hurt to think that the God he loved had deserted him. Had betrayed Ellen. The thought startled him and, for some reason, brought Oscar and Hattie to his mind. How he longed to have the dear couple to talk to now. They would have offered comfort from the Scriptures, and wise words of counsel. Maybe they could have made some sense of it all for him.

But they were gone and he was left alone.