And Then There's This... Norma: Notes Toward An Exemplary Marriage

This is the September 3, 2020, excerpt from “Stardust: An Alzheimer's Love Story,” my day to day accounts of caring for my wife Norma in the advanced stages of her dementia.

I admired Norma for a long time before I adored her. When I met her, she was 19, already married and working as secretary to the head of the School of Journalism at Ohio University. Her boss was a crusty old newspaper veteran, nervous, fussy and given to bouts of temper, but he treated her well. How could he not? Can you imagine acting badly toward a pretty young woman who always anticipated what needed to be done and did it well and on time, who glided into the room like a sunbeam (even in high heels) and exuded the quiet confidence of a museum docent? It would have been ungallant.

I was one of six first-year graduate assistants who buzzed around her office, reading and racking newspapers and academic journals and attempting to break her up by whispering insults about her fidgety boss (and ours). Once she confided in me that she had a headache, whereupon I trotted to a bar around the corner and brought her back a shot of vodka in a paper cup. I must have done that three or four times, each time her smile making me feel like I'd been knighted.

I believe our marriage has endured for 61 years–and made it my privilege to care for her—because we have been unfailingly civilized toward each other. Even the dissolution of her first marriage was civilized. She had wed her high school sweetheart only to discover soon after that she didn't love him. Hurt though he was by her leaving, he was still a decent enough guy to drive her the four hours between their place and mine and drop her off at my door without any display of meanness or ill will. We never saw him again. His courtesy vividly demonstrated that emotionally charged situations needn't spark emotional explosions—and that life is better when they don't.

Coping with hard times and four kids in our own marriage led to plenty of arguments between us, but they were about matters that needed to be settled, not disguises for personal attacks. Whatever our disagreements, there was never any shouting, name calling or doors slammed in anger. Outbursts were luxuries for the uncultivated, we felt. We were no less restrained when it came to dealing with our extra-marital romances (and they were authentic romances, not casual affairs). We each knew when the other was involved, but we also knew–as Hallmarkian as it may sound–that loving someone else didn't inevitably mean loving each other less. Sure, there were jealousies, but they were quite manageable ones with never a slur, ultimatum or confrontation.

It helped, of course, that for 34 years (1981-2015) we lived separately and didn't face the daily grind of conforming to the other's ideals. In Norma's best of all possible worlds, I would have been eager to own a home, work in the front yard and give a good goddamn about curtains and bedspreads. In mine, we would have lived in a rented room, made love like newlyweds and listened to bluegrass music at 4 in the morning. Neither of us envisioned the endless rampage of Alzheimer's.

Tonight, Norma is more unsettled than usual. Since I put her to bed and tip-toed into my office, she's called me back again and again, begging me to stay with her. Although I ache to be alone, I can't turn her down. Sitting beside her is not an unpleasant chore. She's so pretty tonight. Normally, she's clad in a loose T-shirt or those aggressively ugly pajamas. But our daughter-in-law Jewel came out this afternoon, bathed her, took her for ice cream and dressed her for bed in a sleek sleeveless top that displays her slim brown arms to heart-stirring advantage. She lies there with her eyes closed, her brow high and unfurrowed, looking half her age and eminently kissable. As we listen to Stardust, she doesn't just hold my hand, she grips it hard, tightly and almost desperately as though she wants me to pull her up out of the crowd that's crushing her and onto the stage of my embracing memory, where we both can be young again and look out together on the same bright world we started in.