Are We Married? By Michael De Rosa

Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash

As I looked at the menu, trying to find something my wife would like that we could share, she leaned back in her seat, beaming, and asked me, “Are we married?”

Not surprising given that my love was diagnosed with dementia about three years ago. It was not the first or the last time my love would ask who I am in her life. It can come anytime, but usually it happens when she is exhausted, in an unfamiliar place, or both.

The first time she asked me was when we were on vacation in Iceland. I was shocked, but when I said yes, the color returned to her face. Visibly relieved, she smiled at me and became her old self again.

I, however, would never be the same again. I was always on alert for further changes in her memory or behavior. Dementia is a progressive disease that steals your most recent memories first.

We had come together late in life after both of us had lost our spouses. I worried her memories of me would fade before those of her previous life.

*

Paris is my wife’s favorite city, and she still remembers that we spent our honeymoon here five years ago. This was the third time we had visited. She was excited to visit before we went on a river cruise. We walked to a restaurant across the avenue from our Paris hotel to have lunch after our long flight from Philadelphia.

As I sat across from her at the restaurant, I told her, “Yes, we are married.”

She giggled at the novelty of being married to the man seated across from her. I told her a condensed version of our origin story—our eight years together, and how we went from fifteen years as colleagues, and were brought together by our love of theater and travel. We began living together and eventually married. Both of us were very happy with the new life we had fashioned.

Each time I tell her our story, it’s painful—like when a bandage is ripped from a wound. I am sad that we no longer share the same memories and wistful that we will no longer make new ones that she will recall. These moments will be as evanescent as a snowflake that lands on the tip of her nose.

The waiter interrupted our story, as surely as the passage of time will someday interrupt our life together.

I ordered Supreme Volaille (chicken breast with gnocchi, tomato, and basil) and mille-feuille (a Napoleon with caramel sauce). As we shared the delicious chicken and fabulous dessert, my love kept asking in giggling wonderment, “Are we married?”

With no short-term memory, my wife repeats herself.

Sometimes after a restorative nap, her memory of me returns. But I’m haunted by the fear that, eventually, no amount of sleep will restore her memories of me and the second life we built—a life of comfortable retirement, eating out, traveling and going to the theater and ballet. I will be another face in a sea of nameless faces.

After lunch, we retired to our hotel for a nap. After about half an hour, my love abruptly woke me, shouting, “We have to go back home immediately to help friends.”

“What friends?” I asked.

But she could not tell me—a frequent delusion that occurred when we traveled. She believed some friends were supposed to join us.

Her delusion had turned to frenzy. She needed to act.

My love ran around the bed and headed for the door. She was wearing no shoes and had no money or passport. As she opened the door, I put my arms around her and pulled her back, fearing for her safety.

My wife has poor vision. She might walk straight toward the spiral staircase and fall.

As I pulled her back into our room, she yelled to people outside the hallway, “Help me! Do you see what he’s doing?”

I felt lucky the people in the hall did not respond to her cries and come over to check what was happening. What would I say to them?

She would not be deterred, and I couldn’t break the spell she was under. I didn’t want to have to physically restrain her. I called her daughter in Philadelphia, and she tried to calm her mother down, telling her she would try to locate her friends. But it didn’t work. My love was obsessed with finding her friends.

I needed help. So I tried to phone the front desk and failed. Stressed, I had forgotten to press “9” to make the call. I asked my stepdaughter to have the front desk call me.

Finally, I talked to a woman at the front desk and explained, “My wife needs a doctor.” I was hoping that a physician could do what I couldn’t—bring her back to herself.

The woman said she would call emergency services. And that it would take about fifteen minutes for them to arrive.

We waited, and I wrapped a blanket around my wife to keep her warm.

Eventually, there was a sharp rap at the door, followed by an even harder knock. When I opened the door, three EMTs poured into the room. The space of our tiny room shrank by half, with two young men and a young woman carrying what I think was a defibrillator.

The head EMT asked me what the problem was. Harried, I did not notice that he spoke English, so I told him I didn’t speak French.

He answered, “I am speaking English.”

I guess I was pretty stressed.

I recounted what had occurred. The EMTs took her vitals. My wife’s vitals are always fine. French EMTs don’t carry medicines, so we had to go to a hospital.

The woman took my wife inside the ambulance, strapped her into the gurney, and covered her. I went up front, buckled my seat belt, and rode sandwiched between the two EMTs.

We entered heavy traffic on the avenue outside our hotel. With our siren blaring and lights flashing, cars grudgingly gave way. The driver accelerated and braked in between the cars. When a hole opened up, even in an oncoming lane, he popped in. I watched from my high seat as we slalomed from lane to lane like skiing moguls. I had the impression that this was his usual way of driving.

Now I worried for our physical safety. Would we survive the harrowing drive to the hospital?

As this was going on, the EMT who wasn’t driving asked, “What kind of music do you like?”

Momentarily confused, I blurted, “Fifties and sixties.”

“Be more specific,” he answered.

Chuck Berry was all I could come up with.

With a few taps on his cell phone, I was listening to “Johnny B. Good.”

“Do you know this song?” I asked him.

“No.”

Then he said, “Do you want to hear my music?”

“Sure,” I replied.

He then started playing French Hip-Hop.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

“I can’t understand it.”

He laughed.

We bumped down the avenue to the blaring siren and the soundtrack of French rap. We were at the Hôpital Bichat Claude-Bernard in less than fifteen minutes.

When we entered the hospital waiting room, my love was quiet. She no longer asked about her friends. Her face still had no color, but my concern for her lessened because I was emotionally exhausted.

I was worried that her care would not be up to US standards. Having spent time in a local ER, I was evaluating the difference between this hospital in Paris and ours in a Philly suburb.

The vibe in the Paris hospital was institutional and utilitarian, with no decorations on the walls or comfortable chairs, but it was very professional.

I recounted what precipitated our hospital visit, and the nurse noted it. Another nurse placed my wife on a stretcher and covered her. I was heartened by the fact that I could see the usual modern equipment. However, there was little privacy, and patients were separated by only a curtain in a common area.

Finally, I saw the doctor, and I told him what happened. I hoped he would offer a treatment that differed from what was available at home. He did not. He confirmed that there are no miracle cures and no hope of finding one for dementia.

He prescribed a mild sedative to control her agitation.

Before he left, I asked him how we would pay, and he seemed confused. I received the answer to my question in an email with a bill for about $150 that arrived several weeks later.

My love was now smiling. The color had returned to her cheeks as if nothing had happened. She never recalls any of these episodes. But I remember the pain and bewilderment of each one. I never know when or where the next one will occur. How will I react when my wife becomes a different person, yelling at me, trying to flee, or telling me she wants to go home even though she can’t tell me where home is? Trying to control her is difficult, but trying to contain my emotions and actions so as not to make the situation worse is becoming increasingly tough.

I looked at my reflection in a nearby mirror. I looked exhausted and drained—as if I were the patient.

We returned to our hotel and fell asleep. When we woke up, we went out to find a place to eat. As we passed restaurants, she stared at the patrons sitting outside.

When I asked her what she was doing, she said, in her normal voice, “I’m looking for my friend.”

Her calmness was comforting. I was used to this delusion and knew it would disappear once we were home.

Almost a year has passed since we were in Paris. My love no longer asks: “Are we married?”

After an especially enjoyable time, she will ask: “Will you marry me?”

I always respond: “We are married.”

With tears of joy, she replies: “I didn’t know that.”

I am now the sole repository of our memories together.

My love does not always remember my name, that we are married, or where we live.

But there remains an emotional imprint of our bond, a recognition that is deeper than our memories. We still hug and snuggle. She tells me: “I love you so much.”

Michael De Rosa is a writer from Wallingford, PA, who recently retired as a professor (emeritus) of chemistry at Penn State Brandywine. His interests include travel, photography, and birding. The writer’s work has appeared in Ariel Chart, Academy of the Heart and Mind, and Bright Flash Literary Review.