Keeper: One House, Three Generations, and a Journey Into Alzheimer's by Andrea Gillies Page B

streamlined white and an ungainly portly ginger thing cantering gamely behind are seen disappearing into the horizon line. So this is how it is. About the dogs, we are dogmatic. They can’t ever go out on their own. Our neighbor has eight cats. Beyond the lure of feline sniffs, the mesmerizing cat trails leading through the wood, there’s an open gate, miles of quiet roads and open fields. There’s trouble out there. Farm dogs to get into fights with. Unsuspecting pet rabbits. Plus, and here’s the clincher, they’ve proven not completely trustworthy with sheep.
    I T’S A BEAUTIFUL day and Nancy wants to be out in the garden. Nobody has the time (at least Chris and I don’t) or the inclination (Morris doesn’t) to be in the garden with her in the way that she wants: attentive, lazy, gossiping, devoted to her amusement. But it’s a really beautiful day and I have to face the fact that I’m not going to get any writing done. I go out to do some weeding and take Nancy with me. Every inner piece of wall has a herbaceous border, and every border is overgrown. It’s the myth of Sisyphus, horticultural version: I push the wheelbarrow up the hill and it just rolls down again. Dandelions see extermination as a challenge: lop their heads off and they’ll grow twice as many new ones overnight. But it’s a beautiful day and the heart wants to be outdoors. The heart wants it and Nancy is determined. Nancy and I go out singing, each our own versions of “When Irish Eyes …”. Hers, I note, involves a pudding and a gate. I give her the two gardening cushions to hold and a rug to sit on, and I fetch the trowel and the shears and a scarf for my head. We go to the border beyond the north lawn, which is wide and full of white and yellow flowers of uncertain parentage, and the whole dishearteningly grassy. I kneel and have the trowel poised and sense Nancy standing behind me. She’s right behind, leaning forward to touch my shoulder.
    “Do you want to help?” I ask her.
    “I’d love to help. Nobody ever asks me, though. They’re not nice people here. They don’t let me out.”
    “Well, you’re out now.”
    “It’s the first time in about five years, I can tell you that.”
    “Here. Kneel down next to me.” She can’t, of course. She’s almost eighty and her weeding days are over. But she’s already bending, apparently effortlessly, to pull dead flowers from last year’s Potentilla and secreting them in her palm. She makes a heap on the rug, and then she pulls a tulip out, bulb and all, holding it aloft like a sword and looking vaguely triumphant.
    “Let me tell you what needs doing,” I say pleasantly.
    “You should because I’ll make a terrible mess of it otherwise. I can’t remember things anymore.”
    Is it memory that’s returned to her, in this gobbet of self-awareness, transitorily, almost freakishly, or is it language, allowing her to express thoughts she can’t ordinarily articulate? Has the singing done its work?
    “I haven’t been very well lately,” she tells me. “But I can’t quite put my finger on it. What it is that’s wrong. Something’s wrong, I know that. But I can’t … I can’t seem to find it.”
    She knocks the heel of her palm against her forehead and her eyes fill with tears. “My memory doesn’t work. I can’t remember things. Even quite little things. And they tell me it doesn’t matter. At the hospital, they tell me that. But it does matter. It matters to me. They say I’ll get better. The doctors, they do say that. I have to be patient. But it’s difficult, you know. And I know that something is very badly wrong.”
    There’s a shout from behind and Jack’s there. “Hey, Mum. Hi, Gran.”
    “Hello, hello, hello,” she says to him. “And how are you today? How’s my little man? You look very smart in your jacket.”
    “I’m fine, thanks. Well … I’m just going in. Starving,” he says, turning and loping away.
    “You must be, yes, you must get