Last Pictures

LAST PICTURES 

 

Kevin Hull

 

for Mrs. Rose Landon

 

 

 

This is a true story of an elderly couple, Mr. and Mrs. Landon, for whom I worked periodically over a number of years. First I was called in to paint the interior; years later I painted the exterior, and, finally Mrs. Landon called me to do some odd jobs for her. She was a petite, slightly plump woman, wearing eye-glasses, probably in her sixties. At first her husband, dressed in workman’s clothes, used a cane and spoke little but with lucidity. On the second job I noticed he was in a wheelchair and incommunicative. Time passed. I was driving down the hill that passed by their house. I thought of time and life and work, and arrived home in a somber mood. On another visit to their house two things stood out: her sad and fragile loneliness and her husband’s absence. His Alzheimer’s had progressed, and he had been put into a nursing home. And on my last job for her she seemed utterly lost and, after watching me work for a while, shared a tearful admission of his death. I could sense her feelings of guilt, helplessness and sorrow. I tried my best to console her, but she seemed far, far away and distrusting of any consolation whatever. Years later I wrote the following short, short story �" a work which was pretty much given to me as is. I hope you find something of value in it. Through nothing more than glimpses over a period of years, I learned the horror of this disease.

                          

 

 

 

 

       At 2 a.m. on a typical chill and foggy morning, an old man opened the front door to his house and walked into the darkness of his sandy, scraggly yard. His gait was unsteady, and his left shoulder sent the wind chimes in motion, as he righted himself back onto the sidewalk. He stood there for nearly ten minutes; then he turned and wobbled back inside the house; poured a bowl of cereal, took a spoon from the sink and sat down. He did not get the milk, but sat holding the spoon and staring down at the flowing grain of the hard wood table. Rising abruptly, he dropped the spoon onto the linoleum floor.

       “John, is that you?” his wife called from the bedroom. He did not answer, but walked out the front door, to the driveway, and got into the car. The car alarm beeped as he fumbled with the keys and stared into the dashboard, a crease of bewilderment across his forehead. “What are you doing?” she asked nervously.

       “I want to see if the car works,” he said in a thin monotone, staring straight ahead.

       “But you know it works,” she said, a touch of exasperation behind the old sad strain in her voice. “We drive it all the time.” She stood in her robe, her arms closed round her against the night chill. The night was black and foggy and they seemed to be the only two people on earth.

       “If you don’t come inside I’ll have to call somebody.” He stopped fumbling with the keys, and staring straight into but not through the windshield, he seemed to have seized on an idea.

       “Who would you call?” he spoke almost in a whisper.

       She hesitated, then in a weak, high-pitched voice, said: “I’ll . . . I’ll call the police.” He looked up into the shadows gathered round the porch light and focused on her face with an expression of stark unfamiliarity. His forehead, wrinkled in consternation, shone in the moonlight.

       “I wish you would,” he said slowly, again in a monotone. “Maybe they could tell me who I am.”

 

y

 

 

She held him gently by the shoulders and encouraged him out of the car. He did not resist. Just before dawn, she lay awake recalling the recent nights of fear and helplessness, the soft distant snoring of her husband punctuating her sense of isolation. She was forced to watch him all the time, and she was so tired. She lived in the dark, her life an afterthought between waking and sleeping. She bit her lip, and tried not to think. Morning arrived like a scream.

 

       His name was John. He had a fifty year old daughter; though for the most part he was unaware of this. He saw pictures in his mind from previous times, from dreams. He wanted to put them in order. There was something missing. He wanted desperately to find it, to keep it safe. This work drove him to further distraction, made him morose, restless and silent. He spent his time searching through the distant pictures of his life �" abrupt snapshots of emotion he wished either to kiss or hurl into hell. He wanted to remember. But, sadly, his vagrant thoughts seemed to trail away from him in vague confusion.

 

       “When did Frank leave?” he asked her, panic and volume building with each syllable.

       “Do you know who I am?” she said, her voice cracking.

       “Where’s Frank!” he shouted, fearfully, his bony hands trembling. She put her arms round his shoulder and hugged him tenderly.

       “He’ll be back soon,” she whispered, kissing him on the cheek. “Now get some rest, darling.” She had never known John’s older brother. He’d been killed in the Great War before she and John were married. She had seen pictures.

 

y

 

 

She told herself she had to do it. But she hated the arguments she used both to defend her action and to condemn it. Either way she and John would be alone. The nursing home was a cheerless place of unfinished ghosts, remnants and ruins of human identities languishing in the labored breathing of fragile moments recklessly spent and largely forgotten. She couldn’t bear the place.

       “John,” she thought sadly, “maybe you’re the lucky one . . . “ And, with a strong sense of shame, she put her face in her hands.

 

The prayer itself was pain, with nothing of the sweet fervor of a prayer intended to ease suffering. It was the voice of sacrifice and guilt driven by devotion. She knew he would not find himself again. He had gone too far. It would be best if he kept going. She prayed the journey be finished quickly, mercifully. And she despised herself for this prayer, suspicious of her motives, ashamed of her faithlessness, her fear, and her weakness. And yet she prayed.

 

 

 

y

 

 

John was far away. He seldom ate more than a few bites. He never spoke. All his efforts, unseen and unguessed, were focused inward. He had long ago utterly given up the race; he could not keep up nor force the pictures to stop before the window of his awareness. He tried with all that was left of him to wring the essential out of his life, to distill all the images in a single drop of precious life, a single exquisite jewel of knowing. His thoughts poured out of emptiness in a desperate rush . . .

 

What is this life? How could anything be so close? And so distant? So distant! Distant!

 

One night she dreamed John came to her, smiled tenderly and with confidence, touched her shoulder gently, and said: “It’s all right, sweetheart.” She woke sobbing, yet strangely, inexplicably happy.

 

       John was staring into space, into the open mystery no one could see; a frail old man bleached by time, diminished and feeble, staring wildly outward-inward. And with his last pictures, these last thoughts: I see it now . . . All of it! . . . It was . . . The love . . . The love!

Reviews

[Lynx]

Very well written.

As far as I know though, Alzheimer's doesn't cause you to forget who you are, just when you are. Does the first part refer to something else?