I feel an impulse to start writing here again. I want to write about several impersonal topics but before I do that, I think I should describe recent events in my life. This is probably the first time I’ve written here about my life without intending to illustrate some point or other that applies to everyone.<\/p>\n
Many times over the years I wrote here about my girlfriend Julia. Our relationship began 36 years ago and we’re in our seventies now so it seems ridiculous to call her my “girlfriend”, but we never got married and “partner” sounds even more ridiculous to me. Three years ago she decided she didn’t love me anymore and asked me to leave our house in New Mexico, so I moved back to New York. As soon as I was packed she remembered that she did still love me but I left anyway. For the next three years we lived apart but talked on the phone every day. <\/p>\n
Three months ago she suddenly developed dementia. In retrospect I see that some symptoms had been developing slowly and continuously over seven years or more but those symptoms were so mild that before last August nobody who knows her thought she had dementia and after that date it became obvious to everyone. <\/p>\n
Since then she has spent 17 days in two New Mexico hospitals. The doctors haven’t produced a diagnosis or treatment plan. The hospitals here are very bad. I’m thinking of taking her to a third hospital.<\/p>\n
I went back to New Mexico as soon as I could and have been living with her again, taking care of her, ever since. I told her I will take care of her for as long as we both live. I offered for the umpteenth time to get married and this time, for the first time, she said yes. There’s a part of my mind that tells me, “It’s a big mistake to saddle yourself with this obligation for the rest of your life. This woman rejected you not once but twice (she decided once before that she didn’t love me anymore and that time she really broke up with me for years). She wouldn’t do this for you. Are you crazy?” But I love her so I’m doing it.<\/p>\n
So here I am in a tiny house in New Mexico taking care of a dementia patient. The first few weeks we loved each other so intensely, love was so manifest, that we both agreed it was the best time we have ever spent together. Those weeks were probably the best weeks of my entire life. I kept telling her, “No matter what happens to your mind, maybe you can hold onto this love.” She agreed. Really I wanted to say, “Consciousness will always be here,” but she was never interested in consciousness except when there was transmission between us, and that phenomenon happened only once since I came back to take care of her. <\/p>\n
But as the weeks went on she became sadder and angrier and more confused, and although she seems to still love one of the cats she has become increasingly cold to everyone else including me. And she still loves her mother who she believes is living in an afterlife sort of way in the bedroom. She doesn’t understand what’s happening to her and her mind insists on blaming somebody for it, so she directs blame outward in a general way including at me.<\/p>\n
Much of this is incredibly sad. For example, it’s no longer safe for her to drive or leave the house alone. Last month she wandered away and was found kneeling in the center of a busy intersection kissing the pavement. Afterward she explained to me that she did this because she loves Santa Fe, the city where we live. Love is a good thing but now there’s an alarm on the front door so I know when she tries to go out and she wears AirTags on her belt loops. She hates these things but so far, in her lucid moments, she recognizes the need for them and accepts them voluntarily.<\/p>\n
Here’s the thing that breaks my heart most intensely. It gives me a physical pain in my chest. Last month I had to move her IDs and credit cards from her wallet to mine because she kept throwing them out (she throws out all sorts of valuable things and I have to sort through the garbage every night to retrieve them). She hates that I did this but so far she recognizes in her periodic lucid moments the need for it and accepts it. Periodically (her state fluctuates widely hour to hour) she becomes very angry and upset that she has lost her “agency”, and the first specific complaint is usually, “I don’t have a credit card anymore.” (I opened a new credit card account for her that I can limit if necessary without affecting anything else, but the card hasn’t arrived yet. She can’t drive safely anymore.)<\/p>\n
That’s all prolog to the thing that makes me saddest. A few days ago I discovered that she has filled her wallet, which I retrieved from the garbage last month, with expired IDs and expired credit cards. She’s like a child pretending to be a grown up with fake grown up contents in her wallet. That she is reduced to this, to a child pretending to be an adult, gives me a physical pain in my chest. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I feel an impulse to start writing here again. I want to write about several impersonal topics but before I do that, I think I should describe recent events in my life. This is probably the first time I’ve written here about my life without intending to illustrate some point or other that applies to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9,33],"class_list":["post-6312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-freddies-biography","tag-julia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6YVpx-1DO","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6312"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6318,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6312\/revisions\/6318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}