A Thrifted Tee

When I am with him, my alzheimer’s client, we pretend. It could be seen as placating him. Being fake? Dishonest? What is the difference?

Yes, I act like it is the first time he has asked me a question he has already asked twenty times before, but it is the first time in that moment, so I encounter it as new.

His mind turns over every 30 seconds, he blinks into the scene of his life, new to it, like a worn-out thrifted tee shirt you just bought. You can feel the memories in it,

you don't know them, you weren't there when they happened, but you feel them in the threadbare cotton. In the line of tiny holes along the waistband, where the fabric may have rubbed against a belt buckle. In the faint pink or grey hues of a shirt washed with every color because you love her, you'll wear her even if she is faded or bled into or spilled on.

How did she come to you if she was so loved?

That’s how it is with him, he looks up at me afraid he is not where he should be, that he is in someone else's shirt.

But I smile as if he has been here all along. Though he feels as if he has just arrived, so I don’t ask him to explain where he has been.

I know him. He is comforted to be recognized. We begin a play the moment he appears

Oh you are here! He says

Yes I am! I say,

and we are exactly where we are supposed to be.

He searches my face to see if

I think he is as strange as he feels, strange,

sometimes he tells me that.

I feel like I am losing my mind. He slips this message to me before the reset.

I know I say. But you're ok.

I mean this honestly. Not ok in the sense that he is not losing his mind, because he is. But ok, because he is home, he is dry and clean and safe. Because he is loved by his wife and his dog, and his me, this stranger who shows up every Monday to play pretend in a way that is more honest because I am a stranger.

His wife plays along, but it is different; the context of their whole life has changed.

Her understanding of who he was is in her mind, even as she redefines their relationship, and she does this so well

but for them it is different. He knows she is important, the love of his life; he feels this in his gut, in the way he wants to care for her, but he doesn't know how.

He is always right outside of what is going on. When she is headed to the door, he becomes frantic. Should he be ready to go too?

Is he making her late?

Is he unprepared?

Why is she leaving? Is she leaving him because he has lost his way, because he was gone too long?

But then there is me,

he looks to me to set the tone of our relationship. I came to him after his memory stopped.

I introduce myself every day for two years.

I am your wife's friend, your friend, I say.

And we are actors.

Ah yes. I am lucky here; you were an actor before your mind started stuttering through the day. And so we act.

And though you don't know who you are outside of pretend. You know that you can play,

so you do. We do.

Our language is cliches and platitudes, snippets of showtunes and jazz hands, and film quotes, with a wink and a nod, we agree to play.

And he snuggles into the thrifted tee of someone else's life that he doesn’t remember is his, his skin, his home, his tee. He plays the part so well.