Slow Dancing with a Stranger by Meryl Comer

Author:Meryl Comer
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins

This was the side of the man I chose to remember, hold onto, and honor with care. Everything else I locked away, just like the wine cellar.

At night, the fears did not stay in the cellar. I lay awake trying to figure out how to slow the financial bleed. The answer I kept coming back to was to bring Harvey home. What I discounted was my own physical and mental health. It was never part of the equation.

Around-the-clock home care was still expensive, but if I took a twelve-hour shift and worked part-time from home, I could stretch our resources for several more years. Over time the disease would slow Harvey down physically and even temper the violent outbursts as his mind shut down his body. I knew from my reading that eventually he would forget how to walk. There would come a time when I would no longer have to chase him or fear that he might elude me in the middle of the night.

If I personally managed the care, there would be no guilt that I was abandoning him. There would be no long drives in the dead of winter or worries that the nurses might quit. The daily fear that Harvey might do something to get himself kicked out of Copper Ridge would be gone. Most of all, I would be comforted knowing that Harvey was never neglected because of his behavior, never restrained or overmedicated.

I kept hoping that somewhere, deep in his dementia, Harvey would know my touch and remember he was loved.

All along my friends and family had been asking me the wrong question. When they demanded to know if Harvey would have done the same for me, I could never easily answer them. Who among us can know with certainty how we will act until we are in the middle of a crisis? I imagine that the doctor side of Harvey would have kicked in. He would have done whatever he could to get me the best medical attention and put me into the right clinical trials. But would he have abandoned his career to take care of me, bathe me, diaper me, dress me, feed me, cater to my behaviors and personal needs? I doubt it. No. I know it.

Over time, that point seemed increasingly irrelevant. The real question wasn’t what Harvey might have done. It was what I felt compelled to do as a loyal and responsible human being. If I had once temporarily left him for indiscretions that insulted our marriage, leaving under the circumstance no longer seemed like an option. The timeline of the hurtful episode overlapped with the earliest symptoms of the disease and the vagaries of his diagnosis like a bad dream.

It was late December, just two weeks before Christmas. That day, I drove home from the office during my lunch break to pick up papers for a late afternoon meeting. It was something I rarely did, but it was not unusual for Harvey to be home around that time to let out our dog and grab a bite to eat.

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