Silver Linings

 

(photo: September 2017)

September 1st, 2020

The light this morning is golden, and gorgeous. I think if I were a photographer, and it were the other end of the day, I might call it the magic hour. The sunshine seems more intense and the trees a more vivid green against the pre-storm sky. There will be rain, and then, perhaps, a rainbow. This is what I notice as I drive from my home to visit my husband, 135 km away. The light, the forest, the possibility of a rainbow. 

For everyone, summer 2020 is unlike any other; Covid-19 has changed everything. This was always going to be an unusual summer for me: late last autumn my husband, who is living with early onset dementia, moved into a long term care home. I was able to visit him almost daily until March. Covid closed his care home, and I wasn’t able to see him in person again until late May, when he was moved to a specialist unit in a hospital in the next door city. (But this is Canada, “next door” is a two hour drive.) 

I am a scrapbooker; every visit I take a different scrapbook to look at with my husband. Usually he loves seeing pictures of “his Dad” (really, of course, photos of himself). Sometimes he points to a picture of me and says something lovely: “she’s a smart one,” or “I like her.” Not today. Today he has no interest in the scrapbook; when he does speak, his words make no sense. There is no sign that he recognises me at all, even as a kind person, someone he can trust. (He has not known me as Louise, or his wife, for some time.) He sleeps for most of the morning, leaving me alone with our memories. I can usually find a sliver lining, and I will, but right now I feel broken.  I don’t know how much more sadness my heart can take. I blink away tears, move 2 meters away and sneak off my mask to blow my nose, pull back my shoulders, and sit beside him again, taking his hand in mine. He is safe, and we are together, and when he wakes up we’ll stroll through the halls, hand-in-hand. He’s not stuck in a hospital room by himself, like so many other people who are unable to return to their care home.  His care home, and this unit are Covid-free, and have been since the outbreak.  

One of the staff members is baking cookies; it might be the scent of sugar and vanilla and chocolate chips that wakes my husband.  He can’t see me smiling at him, masked as I am, but I hope he realises I am happy.  “Hey,” I say his name.  “I love you.”