Dementia Rivers (or Chariots)
by Stephen
I watched a woman who was slowly dying of a gradually growing gap
between family visits (and something else that required copious amounts of pain killers)
raise her right hand and slowly run her fingers through a freezing cold stream
that was meandering its way over her bed and into the next room. She was speaking
to someone who wasn’t there; or I guess more truthfully,
she was talking to someone who used to be there, and who’s being there etched such a deep ravine into her mind that they withstood the genocide of memories
led by her dementia.
Starting with birthdays, where she put things, her appointments.
Then slowly there were no more names,
her mind forgot how to move her feet when she wanted to walk down the stairs. After that, there was no hope of walking.
[ My mother's mother, who was across the hall from this woman, was having her room decorated with poinsettias and garlands and trains with snowmen. There were cards and there were our names on November's visitor's log. Her hair was whiter than her teeth and skin was softer than mine or my sisters'. She was being showered with attention and conversation, so I slipped back to the hallway with my back to the forgotten, forgetful woman's room. ]
Over and over again
she said, Don’t forget about me.
She then pleaded to be brought with them, reaching upward towards the boat on the water.
(Or maybe the golden chariot. I thought later it was maybe just a hand out of reach.)
For well over a half hour, this woman who could not stand on her own reached toward ceiling tiles that were deteriorating slower than her bones, or someone who was becoming more real as her own realness waned, I suppose.
She said that she wasn’t angry. She wasn’t angry,
she wasn’t angry.
(I’m not, I forgive you. I want to be with you. Where, where, where, where, I’m right here, right here, right here, O my God, I just, I just, just let me go with you this time. Do you know? O do you know where she is? She’s with you? I will sing for her if you think I should. Où es-tu? Où es-tu?)
The nurse came in and scared away her only familiar thing.
On Thanksgiving’s eve, I cried in a stale gangway separating thrown away people who are kept alive and entertained with televisions, pain killers and hallucinations.
Where is your boat?
A. Goodwyn, Room 810, That river above your bed is for your departure, not your observance.
