The Empty House

 

The Empty House

By Bill Barksdale, Columnist

Recently I was asked to go to the house of an old friend to make sure it was secured and locked up.  My friend is still alive but lost in the confused fog of dementia.  I’ve known her for well over thirty years.  She lived in this house, alone, for several years as the dementia devoured more of her mind with only the visits of a dedicated In-Home-Support caregiver.  This sainted caregiver visited every day, seven days a week, to check on her charge.  Most of those visits were unpaid.  The caregiver simply – what? – cared.  

About a month ago my beloved friend was moved to a memory care facility after several years of us trying to find some kind of help for her.  Her daughter had died a couple of years ago, but she no longer remembered that.  She no longer remembered old friends or even the dedicated caregiver who visited her every day.  She still enjoyed music.  That seems to be one of the last things to go.  We know from studies that even for people in the depths of dementia and disability, music still stimulates the brain and touches forgotten memories bringing comfort and a kind of peace in those few precious moments.

My friend’s house has been empty for a month or so ever since she was rushed to the hospital after a fall.  It was clear that she could not be returned to her home to live alone, lost and confused.  Our current health care system in the U.S. blindly lets people like this - elderly, ill, disabled – fall through the cracks of a cold, broken bureaucracy to fend for themselves even when they have no coping skills left.

As I brought in the piled-up stack of damp mail and walked through a house I had once laughed in, shared meals in, chatted with my friend in – I was struck by how empty a place can be when it’s no longer cared for.  The beautiful things; books, art painted by an old lover, the untouched piano, a disheveled pile of video cassettes, that ever present ash tray – were all covered with dust. 

The furniture was familiar but in need of a deep cleaning and someone to sit in those chairs and write at that desk, eat at that table.  The stairs were white with grime except where someone had stepped repeatedly until a month ago, the railings ragged with cobwebs.  Upstairs a picture of laughing friends was laying on its back where it had carelessly fallen.  I picked it up and studied each of the laughing faces of the four women, all known to me.  All of them much younger when that picture was taken.  I lovingly stood it up and set it down properly, even though no one would be looking at it.

Almost every room has bookshelves crowded with the interests and passions of a lifetime, art, theater, writing, philosophy.  Neatly stacked are well-used reference books wanting to be opened again by the inquiring hands of their owner who had at one time been a talented writer.  My own spouse had written a book with her many years ago at that now disheveled dining room table. A woman of so many gifts and talents had once lived here, only weeks ago.  Of course those gifts are long muffled by a brain dissolving by a cruel disease we don’t understand. 

I suppose most of us have homes filled with memories like this.  The pictures on my own walls, the tchotchkes that clutter my own tables and shelves will someday be packed in boxes and shipped off to unfamiliar homes, perhaps even a dumpster.  Such is the fate of the accumulation of a lifetime.  Their only kinship being the memories of the one who gathered them together.  In new homes they will combine with different effects and collections, and new stories of times past. 

That picture of me in front of the Eiffel Tower, that snap of us on the roof of our San Francisco house with our beloved dog, Kuma, taken forty years ago will be tossed carelessly and unrecognized into the garbage.  Even the picture of my dear friend with her bright red lipstick and laughing smile will be tossed into the junk heap of lives that were here for a while and have now passed on.  I’m reminded that, as the saying goes “Life is a journey, not a destination.”  Hopefully the journey was mostly a good one.

Yes, even though my friend’s house - home - is full of stuff, it’s empty now.  Her memory that weaved it all together is gone.