Celia lay napping, as she did each afternoon, preparing for Raymond’s sundowning night, his heightened confusion and hallway wanderings. This afternoon, trying to sleep while he slept, she remembered back to the first time he signaled the onset of the condition that changed their lives forever. It was June of 2022, after the worst of the Covid pandemic, when Russia invaded Ukraine.
Gas prices surged, to over five dollars a gallon, and Raymond kept getting it wrong.
“McGregor is down 43 cents,” he said one evening after gassing up the Towne Car.
“Are you sure about that?” she’d asked him.
Celia knew that couldn’t be right and chalked it up to a simple mistake. McGregor’s Shell, the station that filled their tank and serviced their car, must be up 43 cents, she thought.
It scared her when he answered, “Yes,” pleased with himself for bringing home the good news. The following morning, on the way to her yoga class, McGregor had gone from $5.09 to 5.53 a gallon.
She called him on it at dinner, and Raymond just looked down at his green bean casserole, as if he was worried that she was getting it wrong, and he was letting it go.
Since then, the marital vow, “In sickness or in health” had become the guiding principle at the Chalmer household. Raymond knew who she was, and was capable of periods of almost-healthy cognition, but Celia sensed that she was gradually morphing away from a loving wife to a pseudo-anonymous caregiver. Clichés around Alzheimer’s—the tragic loss of the “wonderful person you once knew”—were now lived out each day on Chestnut Lane.
Raymond was human, and so was wonderful and flawed. Celia never regretted her “I do” back in 1973, when an Arab Oil Embargo routinely stranded their Volkswagen van in gas lines that stretched for almost half a mile. Some mornings they laughed it off together, and on other mornings Raymond muttered “the motherfuckers” under his breath.
There was nothing muttered under his breath anymore. Everything was pronounced clearly, almost robotically, but only half the time what Raymond said make linear sense. In February, after the beginning of the conflict with Iran, he’d come in from a blank-stare period in front of television news and said, “President Reagan will begin bombing Iran in five minutes.”
“What are you talking about?” Celia chided, but she recognized the reference to Reagan’s 1984 hot-mic gaffe.
The convolution of time, events, past and present, yesterday and 30 years ago invaded conversations. Interactions between them were now a combination of her directive suggestions and his dream-state perceptions.
Raymond drove his last mile in 2023, mistakenly taking Highway 61 out of town toward Wyman. Daughter Rebecca had confiscated his keys. These days, they walked the neighborhood together, and he could poignantly surprise her with a lovely memory. Gerontologist Dr. Peterson was preparing Celia for the day she’d be unable to care for him at home.
That night was long, and Raymond insisted he wanted to sit in the backyard. Celia was exhausted, having finally dozed off when her phone rang at six a.m. It was Raymond, on his flip-phone.
“McGregor is down 50 cents.”