Memory Is Final

 Michael Sedano

 

Dementia of the Alzheimer's type hits in stages: Onset. Mild cognitive impairment. Mild dementia. Severe dementia. After dementia. I’ve been writing a Memory Series recounting my family’s caregiver life with Alzheimer's since our 2018 diagnosis. Barbara died yesterday. Or was it the day before? (Barbara would have liked the allusion. Her sense of humor was the last cognitive skill Alzheimer's took away. Barbara made a pun only a week ago. or was it the week before?)

 

Love, First Sight. December 1966.

 

Barbara Cauchon wasn’t ready to call it a night, especially with one more paper to write. But then, it was Friday night, and Karen was celebrating the end of Finals at Mike’s apartment just down the street. 

 

Barbara had heard all about this Mike, Karen’s study partner who could knock out a term paper without having to pull an all-nighter. A few minutes with Karen, Barbara figured, would help more than it hurt. And she’d get to meet the famous Mike.

 

The windows and door of Apartment C did little to muffle the loud music playing inside. Something classical, that was different, Barbara thought. She knocked. Karen pulled the door wide open and the music got much louder as it poured out into the night.

 

Mike’s apartment was your typical Isla Vista student lair. A stereo sat on a study desk in the corner. A typewriter occupied another desk. They’d hung a cut-and-paste term paper on the grey-white wall, term paper detritus lay crumpled on the rug near the trash basket. The room smelled of coffee and grass.

 

Karen’s study partner, the term-paper whiz, was seated guru-style on the floor, leaning into the stereo speakers, rocking with the swelling brass of The Ride of the Valkyries. Barbara assumed this is the famous Mike, because what Barbara sees is a shape covered head to foot in a green blanket.

 

“Mike,” Karen said, “Barbara’s here.”

 

Unseen fingers grasp the blanket from underneath to start pulling material from back to front. The blanket gets caught at the shoulders so the figure gives a shudder while yanking the blanket across the back of his head, sliding it slowly down his forehead, across his eyes, his nose, his lips, his chin, finally revealing his face looking curiously at Karen’s friend, Barbara Cauchon.

 

Barbara looks into shiny curious eyes of a barefoot guy with short-long hair wearing a rumpled blue dress shirt. This is her first sight of Michael Sedano. They have their first date in May 1968, a whirlwind courtship, and 54 years of married life.

 

 

Veiled Woman. August 1968.

 

The boy fights sleep but he can’t stop the veiled woman from appearing at his bedside, persisting into his dreams. Dressed in shadow, the woman holds his hand saying nothing only humming softly. He can’t shake her loose; he squeezes his eyes until the eyelids tremble, but even closed, his eyes perceive a seated woman in the dark, her face obscured by an even darker shadow. He wants to see her face but he knows he won’t see it.

 

The veiled woman returns night after night, sits beside his bed, for years. The family moves to a new house; the veiled woman sits beside his new bed. The family moves again. Again, the veiled woman holds his hand while he vainly seeks escape in sleep. But he no longer fears the woman, wonders only Who is she, What does her face look like? Why is she with me?

 

The young man does not notice that the veiled woman stops holding his hand. Occasionally her memory surfaces as he falls into college and grad school dreams, but she remains at the edge of awareness, always masked behind unasked questions.

 

Michael kneeled a lot longer than he’d rehearsed so when the priest let the couple stand, relief and joy magnified Michael’s expectation the ritual is culminating. He promises to love, honor, and cherish, in sickness and in health, all the days of our lives, until Death us do part. He means it.

 

“You may kiss your bride.”

 

Barbara turns toward Michael and lifts her veil. She takes the bottom hem in both hands and pulls the diaphanous material up and away from her lips, her nose, her eyes, and over her forehead. She stares for the first time into her husband’s face. Michael looks into Barbara’s eyes knowing instantly her face is that veiled woman of earliest memory, the Soul who guards my sleep all the days of my life.

 

Barbara May Cauchon Sedano. 

b. May 14, 1944 

d. February 4, 2023

Q E P D

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