After Alzheimer's: Ambushed by Memory of a Place

Memory

Moving Back into Reality One Mall at a Time

Michael Sedano

Only once in our Alzheimer's dementia career did i lose my Barbara in public, during the third year of our five-year passage. By this year, the disease has taken away swaths of vocabulary, debilitates her gait and balance, neutralizes emotions, and constrains Barbara's sociability. Dementia causes profound change, but that doesn't alter one fact: Wherever we are, Barbara is present, observant, and happy. 

Barbara enjoys interacting in the world as she finds it, so we go places and do things. We walk, gain visual stimulation, interact with people, read words connected to things, make small decisions in a restaurant. We're becoming less competent but the world is kind to people like us, generally speaking.

 

One day, I take Barbara to J.C. Penny in the gargantuan Arcadia mall. I'm happy that Barbara selects a garment to try-on. She never liked shopping but this represents decisions and persistence of thoughts, i.e., memory. I'm acutely aware of our progressions.

There's a chair near the sole door into the changing rooms where Barbara will undress herself, don the new garment, undress the try-on, and put on her street clothes. Thereafter, she'll exit the only door. Barbara will see me, I'll see her. I'll take her hand as always, and we shall stroll into the next moment in this place. I am confident Barbara will perform these physical tasks, in her own time, for sure, but she can do it. I don't measure her absence.

 

I hear my name called over the store sound system. Please come to a register far from where I sit near the fitting room's only door. I get to this place lickety-split. Barbara smiles seeing me as I approach. Barbara recognizes me even if she occasionally forgets my name and that we are married, that I am her husband. She trusts people.

 

My immense gratitude to the clerk who recognizes Barbara's confusion then acted so effectively, clashes with my panicking emotional turmoil. Relief passes to realization my negligence hasn't turned into horror, a worst case scenario you hear about Alzheimer's Dementia. 

 

I never want to feel like this not ever again, please, I tell myself, as Barbara and I walked into the mall that day, as if nothing had happened in J.C. Penny. 

I don't go into that store again, until Christmas week.

 

This afternoon, my friend Thelma and I walk into J.C. Penny. Memory nudges then floods across my eyes. Walking into those double doors from the parking lot, I hesitate, recoil, set my feet to flee. I'm overpowered feeling again that instant of fearful dread knowing a helpless woman wandering lost could have attracted evil people. I don't want to be here.

 

Off to my side, daylight coming through double doors exiting to the parking lot pulls my eyes outside. Barbara would have gone to the light. Strangers are out there. I take a deep breath and exhale, wanting to expel the memories. I cannot, the power of this space overcomes me.

 

Thelma and I stroll into the mall like any two Christmas shoppers. I look into stores and rest area niches wondering, would I have found Barbara there? How could I not see Barbara leave? There is only a single door. My mind has gotten trapped between now and that moment four years ago.

My friend and I go shopping and when it's time, we head back the way we entered the mall. For the second time today, I walk into J.C. Penny. I concentrate on getting through this place before memory ambushes me again. All I want is out of here. 

We pass through those double doors and I've forgotten where I parked. Thelma takes my hand and guides me to the right place for me.