Green Vanilla Tea: One Family's Extraordinary Journey of Love, Hope, and Remembering by Marie Williams

Author:Marie Williams [Williams, Marie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Personal Memoirs, Health & Fitness, Diseases, Alzheimer's & Dementia
ISBN: 9781626251991
Google: 2q5XBAAAQBAJ
Publisher: New Harbinger Publications
Published: 2014-09-30T14:00:00+00:00

14

The doorbell rang and set off the wild wagging of Jessie’s tail. She went to the door to sniff out who was there. We were a one-dog home now. Maxi had gone to live with Ed and Liz for a while, and the house was much quieter without her constant high-pitched yapping. She would come back to us later, but for now, Dominic couldn’t tolerate the shrill sound of her barking reverberating inside his head like a wailing alarm.

It was 8:00 a.m. of my first day off work on indefinite extended leave—five months after receiving that bad-news phone call from Dr. Chen. My workplace was incredibly supportive. They offered me as much time off as I needed—no time frames, no expectations. They filled my position with locums, and said it would be there whenever I came back. At least I knew I had a job to go back to. I joined Jessie and opened the door to Felicity’s smiling face and a warm batch of freshly baked raisin bran muffins.

“Are you okay?” she asked, taking in my daggy appearance. We talked as we walked to the kitchen.

“Dominic’s not really sleeping at night.”

“Do you need anything?”

“Mmm, a decent pair of pj’s maybe?”

“pj’s?!”

I started to laugh. Dominic was increasingly restless at night. The squeaky door would call out to me night after night, alerting me to his departure from the house. The previous night, when I woke to the squeaking door, I was wearing one of Dominic’s comfy oversized T-shirts with holes under one arm and the nonmatching socks I had been sleeping in. I quickly slipped on an old pair of paint-splattered track pants before rushing out after him. It was some time past midnight. There was Dominic, gliding through the streets, with this tramplike woman with wild, knotted bed hair in hot pursuit. I could almost see the neighbors peeping through their blinds and hear them calling the police to report they had seen that disheveled vagabond chasing the poor disabled guy again!

Still holding the basket of muffins, Felicity started to laugh with me as I recounted my story.

“So, I’m thinking something a bit glam,” I said. “If the police are going to pick me up, I might as well be arrested in style!”

Exhaustion was infused with humor and, laughing ourselves silly over a cup of tea, we imagined me dressed up in all sorts of arrest-worthy attire.

After finishing a second cup, Felicity washed the teacups, rinsed out the teapot, and made her way back to her home next door.

“We’ll make dinner tonight,” she called out as she left. I blew her a kiss from the front door and went back inside to get ready to take Dominic to another appointment. We were meeting with the geriatrician at the memory clinic, followed by a speech therapy session to assess Dominic’s swallow. The ALS symptoms were fast encroaching. These appointments always left Dominic very tired. The walk back to the car became a slower shuffle; his breathing became raspy; increasingly he

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