I was talking with him while we were standing in line at the bank. He and his wife had visited Buzzy’s Country Store several times previously, but I had not seem them in awhile. As I small talked with him he kept looking out the window at his car and finally said to me “I’m not being rude. I’m just checking on my wife to make sure that she’s ok.” Still in small talk mode, I played it off as a joke and asked “You worried she’s gonna take off and leave you?”
He replied “Actually yes. She’s got full blown Alzheimer’s and I never know what she’s going
to do.” I immediately apologized for my dumb joke and asked him when did all this happen. He said “It just hit her all of a sudden.”
It was my turn to make my way to the teller and do the little bit of banking business that I had to do. My friend made his way over to the other teller and did likewise. We both finished up about the same time and then walked out together.
Again, I told him how sorry I was to hear this news and asked him how he was holding up. He said something along the lines about just doing it day by day and hanging in there. As he opened his car door I asked if I could say hello to his wife and he said “Don’t bother. She won’t know you and she’s not going to say anything to you.”
As I looked into the car I saw her sitting there expressionless and just staring straight ahead. Too, I noticed that she looked very different from how I had remembered her from before. When she had visited Buzzy’s previously with her husband she was always very fastidious about her appearance and had always looked very attractive and nice. In the car though, she looked plain awful. I said hello but as her husband had warned, she did not acknowledge me at all.
I then bid the husband goodbye, told him to take care of himself and wished him well. As I got into my vehicle though, I was immediately overwhelmed with a sense of sadness and disbelief about the couple’s situation and teared up a bit. I thought – how could that have happened to such a nice couple?
When I cranked up my vehicle, the radio guy was talking about George Bush Senior’s death and how he had lived such a full and productive life. I glanced over at the couple in the car as I drove out and wondered about their future and how tough the next couple years are going to be for both of them.
I headed down the road. The chorus from this Randy Newman song ran thru my mind.