The Memory Dress

Chapter Forty-Four

FORTY-FOUR

William

23 MAY 2017

Meredith is getting worse. I worry all the time about leaving her on her own now. I tell her where I’m going and when I’ll be back, but she behaves like I’ve been gone for a week when I return from buying my newspaper. What’s worse is she’ll try to hide her concern and I can see the stress that performance causes her. I know she’s in there but reaching her some days feels so terribly hard. How can this be us?

How did we get here when we have shared so much and loved so much? And when we still feel so much for each other? I’m holding on as tightly as I can but every day I feel she is falling away from me. It’s slow and drawn-out, making me question if fast and brutal might have been better, if I had the luxury of choice. I doubt she has any idea she is losing me too. I’m hopeful it’s a pain she will never know. I’m not a healthy man. I haven’t been for a long time. I don’t need a doctor to tell me that. Borrowed time, that’s what I’m on. Too late now to go back and reverse the decisions I made or face the ones I chose to ignore.

She always was the brains. I was always the legs. One half of each other. She could reason a problem away. I would force my way through it. Now I feel her burning frustration in every forgotten conversation and misplaced belonging, in every word left hanging because she’s no longer sure why she said it, where it may have been leading. The only medicine I can offer her are my kisses. When I see she is struggling, I pull her close, shut everyone else out, and soothe the panic away until she softens in my arms.

I used to look at her face and see pure contentment. It’s the same face but it’s static, like she no longer trusts the world around her. She bears the expression of someone who has suffered a great hurt or loss and is too frightened to step back into the woods, into the clinging darkness, to search for her happiness again.

I did take her to the doctor, under the ruse of getting our flu jabs. She never would have gone otherwise. She played it all down, just a silly, isolated mind blank, something that happens to all of us. She even managed to make me feel stupid, as we left fifteen minutes later clutching a handful of leaflets on everything from depression to menopause. They sat unread on the kitchen table for a couple of days before she discreetly placed them in the bin. Neither of us mentioned their disappearance. I decided to do what I always do. I protect her—from her own embarrassment at first, when she returned home empty-handed from the supermarket again and I couldn’t be sure if she had even made it there. Or when chatting to friends and the name of our road or a favorite restaurant would escape her. Then, more dangerously, I protected her from her own exposure, just as she had done for me. I closed ranks around her, covered up her mistakes so no one else would know. It felt kinder. I felt reassured it was what she would want. That I was following her lead.

Fiona was the exception. I did briefly try to find and enlighten her. But she ignored every one of my approaches and I never had the heart to explain that to Meredith. I foolishly held on to the hope that Fiona would talk to us when she was ready. Then Meredith got worse and I kept Fiona shut outside of our pain just as easily as I silently nudged closed the doors on our social life. This was our secret and we would manage it. I would look after Meredith in whatever way she needed me to and pray this worn-out body of mine would outlast her failing mind.

Should I try to find Fiona now? Or leave Meredith with the older, fonder memories that she believes are more recent than I know them to be? Is the game up? Am I kidding myself to think that the strength of our love will keep her with me? I’ve read enough to know dementia is what this is.

That a woman with so many treasured memories should be robbed of them is a cruelty beyond my comprehension most days. I ask myself these questions over and over, weighing the pros and cons. Fiona was always so efficient and organized, but is that what Meredith needs? Would she thank me for letting our daughter build a plan around us? I have never once doubted her love for Fiona, but it still surprises me how the same cells can split and divide and create something so different from the original.

There is a softness to my wife, an inner depth that can be reached only with kindness and consideration. She responds to gentleness and understanding. She warms only to those people who share it. She hates to be rushed. Fiona is governed by a world Meredith knows nothing about. I can see it, even if neither of them can. Fiona’s world is constructed around the necessity to succeed, to be nothing less than brilliant. It rarely pauses to consider people’s feelings. It wraps itself convincingly in the cloak of creativity but it’s ambitious and calculating and strategic. I admire her for having the gumption to stomach it. Talent is not easily defined in Fiona’s world. Perhaps it can’t be when you find yourself in a room with so many equally talented people.

Meredith is the opposite of Fiona. She loves glamour and romance. There is goodness running through her. It’s why I worry she will last longer than me. It’s why I have to make my wishes clear now. She hasn’t allowed the rot to seep inside of her, to twist and turn her into something she was never destined to be. She is a woman who will always turn her face to the sun. So, no. My letter to Fiona is written. I have left it where I know it will be found. My planning is in place. The map of our lives is drawn, I only hope she will recognize it. She just has to follow the dresses. I know my darling wife will be okay when the time comes. I have no choice but to believe that.

She sleeps in today, not waking until well past ten o’clock. I take a breakfast tray to her in bed and she jokes that I must be guilty of something. Then I watch the flicker of doubt cross her face. She’s asking herself if she has forgotten something. A birthday? An anniversary? I reassure her quickly that I do it simply because I love her, and her cheeks flush, not with embarrassment but with the warmth that naturally lights her from within.

It’s as I am placing the tray back in the kitchen that the nausea grabs me, like the very worst kind of motion sickness. I recognize the feeling but not the intensity. The room spins away from me at a speed I cannot fathom. I make a grab for the kitchen work surface but miss it and the tray clatters to the floor. The shower is running. Meredith doesn’t hear it. I collapse forward, feeling as if I will vomit, but nothing comes. Then I am on the floor, the tiles cold beneath my cheek. The temperature is momentarily comforting but panic takes over. I can’t move my right arm to force myself up. Half of me is already dead, lifeless, like someone has drawn a line down the exact center of me from my head to my toes. I lie there, useless, stunned, waiting for the second impact that will finish me off.

I try to call her name, but my lips won’t respond to my desires. I am locked inside myself. Panic rises. I need her. I’ve always needed her. But I don’t want the imprint of her panic to be the thing I take with me. I close my eyes. She’s with me now, back in the workroom, her lap covered in precious silk, doing what she loves. I feel her kiss and I pray harder than I ever have before.

Dear God, let it not be the last.