Dignifying Dementia Read Online Free PDF Page B

rental car on the left side of the road without missing a beat. This was the man who raced ahead of snowstorms, who drove to our weekend home year in and year out. The panic attack bewildered him, too. Unnerved, he asked me to drive back across the bridge.
    Several times after that experience, he got behind the wheel of the car, drove a short distance and said, “I’m not feeling great. Do you mind driving?” He pulled over, walked around to the passenger side, while I got behind the wheel. The few times he did drive after that, I watched him grip the wheel with both hands, hug the curb, and drive well below the speed limit.
    When he was driving, I noticed a faint tremor in the index finger of his right hand as it rested on the steering wheel. I drew it to Jim’s attention. He dismissed it with, “It’s probably the wheel alignment.” A month or so later, he stopped driving altogether.
    His walking changed too. In the past, whenever we walked, and I dragged my heels, he would look back at me and say, “Step it out.” I had been hard pressed to keep up with him, but now he was keeping up with me.
    He also told me that the self-winding watch I had given him years before was losing time or stopping. I suggested that, after all these years, it probably needed a good cleaning. Even after the repair, however, it still stopped, so we took it back to the jeweler.
    The watch doctor said, “Are you swinging your arms? I have a client with Parkinson’s whose watch doesn’t work.” I began to watch Jim’s arms. He wasn’t swinging them as he walked; they were hanging straight down and closer to his sides. We bought a $30 Timex.
    In the first year after the casual emergency room diagnosis, Jim gave up driving, developed a tremor in his finger and became indecisive and withdrawn. While Jim had always preferred his own company and mine to the company of others, he occasionally welcomed joining friends for lunch or for a drink. Now he seemed to be avoiding other people, to be losing what confidence he had.
    He also expressed concern about having difficulty concentrating on his reading. Not that! How many times over the years had he smiled and said, “I haven’t read for two days. Would you go into town or have coffee with a friend, so I can read?” The last fiction he read was Richard Yates’ Collected Stories ; the last poets, Galway Kinnell, Paul Muldoon and Stanley Kunitz.
    The healthy Jim enjoyed gardening, walking, traveling, smoking his pipe, drinking his Beefeater’s Gin or glass of single malt, going to movies, watching The Sopranos , the Master’s, the last game of the World Series, Wimbledon, March Madness and the World Cup. He ordered shrimp with hot garlic sauce, calamari in red sauce, trout amandine, pizza with frutti di mare with a half-bottle of wine. He preferred Monet and Van Gogh, listened to Jacques Loussier Plays Bach , Vivaldi, Britten, Mahler, Telemann, Delius and Herbie Hancock.
    He loved to say, “It’s you and me, kid.” All too soon, it would become “You and me, kid, and dementia.”

PART TWO
    His tears began to flow. It was a secret river that broke through all the dams. The river of pain that everyone carried inside.
    Henning Mankell
    Photo: Ellen Graham
    Living in Hilton Head meant we could take advantage of the mild, snowless days of winter. Our routine included arduous activities like walking on the beach, shopping for groceries, going to movies on Friday afternoons, keeping appointments with dentists or doctors, attending performances of the local theatres and orchestra and going out for lunch. Jim read. And we watched reruns of Law and Order. While Jim was more passive and wanted me to drive, nothing else in his behavior was shocking. Although he did have that disturbing little tremor.
    Because of the internist’s admonition about the checkbook, I watched Jim, and believing he could get better, I bought