vegetables, and packages of frozen meat. We ate packages of cookies, boxes of crackers, and bags of potato chips.
We boiled water to make coffee and tea and to cook boxes of pasta and bags of rice. We defrosted frozen orange juice and frozen lemonade and drank it from pitchers. We baked layer cakes and loaves of bread with the flour and the sugar that was left in the jars on top of the kitchen counter and with the packages of yeast that made it all rise up.
All of it was food that didnât get too old too fast. But it took us a long time to get up and get to the kitchen to make our food, to sit down and eat our breakfast and our lunch and our supper, to get back up and clean up the pots and pans and the dishes and the silverware and to put everything away again. We moved through our house and our lives so slowly then.
But my wife wasnât getting any better anymore for those days that we were back at home. She began to forget how to live in our house or with me anymore. She forgot what things were or what they were for. We made labels for the refrigerator and the food inside it, for the doors to the kitchen and our bedroom and the bathrooms, for the things that she used in the bathroom, and for the couch and the chairs and the other places where she could sit down. We wrote instructions out for the things that we used around our houseâthe telephone and the television, the microwave oven and the stove, the toilet and the sinks.
But she still tried to dial the telephone on the touch pad of the microwave oven and put her dirty clothes away inside the dishwasher. Sometimes she sat down on a chair and peed on the cushion and other times she would throw trash away in the clothes hamper.
We moved through the rooms of our house slowly so that I could show her what things were. We turned doorknobs to open doors up and looked into the different rooms of our house to show her what they were for. We turned water faucets on and off. We turned the coffee maker, the lamps, the television, and all the other appliances on and off too.
She was still surprised that turning a switch on made the ceiling fan turn on or made the living room fill up with light. She was still surprised when she heard somebodyâs voice through the telephone, or when the people on the television started talking or the voices on the radio started talking or singing. She forgot more and more about our house and us until she couldnât always remember my name or why I was helping her get up or eat and then she forgot how to stand up or open her mouth up or say my name or move her arms.
She couldnât get up out of her chair for our walk across the living room to the dining room with her walker. I couldnât help her enough so that she could do it either. So I brought a small table from our spare bedroom out to her in the living room and set it down around her legs. I brought her food out to her too and set it down on the small table in front of her.
It was still too hard for her to sit up and she couldnât lean forward either. Her head had gotten too heavy for her neck and it would fall back against the headrest of her chair and her mouth would fall open a little bit. I would sit down next to her to hold her head up for her so that I could feed her food with a spoon. She couldnât open her mouth very much anymore and she could only chew slowly, but we still had all those long meals together. She would smile as much as she could after she had chewed and swallowed her food.
How Our House Had Gotten Too Old Too
Our house had gotten too old and started to die too. The paint was peeling off it so that the wood was showing through in places. The wood had gotten soft in places too and there were too many moldy age spots growing on it to replace it.
Some of the shingles had come off the roof and I would find them in the bushes around our house and scattered around the front yard and the backyard too. There were cracks in the windowpanes
We boiled water to make coffee and tea and to cook boxes of pasta and bags of rice. We defrosted frozen orange juice and frozen lemonade and drank it from pitchers. We baked layer cakes and loaves of bread with the flour and the sugar that was left in the jars on top of the kitchen counter and with the packages of yeast that made it all rise up.
All of it was food that didnât get too old too fast. But it took us a long time to get up and get to the kitchen to make our food, to sit down and eat our breakfast and our lunch and our supper, to get back up and clean up the pots and pans and the dishes and the silverware and to put everything away again. We moved through our house and our lives so slowly then.
But my wife wasnât getting any better anymore for those days that we were back at home. She began to forget how to live in our house or with me anymore. She forgot what things were or what they were for. We made labels for the refrigerator and the food inside it, for the doors to the kitchen and our bedroom and the bathrooms, for the things that she used in the bathroom, and for the couch and the chairs and the other places where she could sit down. We wrote instructions out for the things that we used around our houseâthe telephone and the television, the microwave oven and the stove, the toilet and the sinks.
But she still tried to dial the telephone on the touch pad of the microwave oven and put her dirty clothes away inside the dishwasher. Sometimes she sat down on a chair and peed on the cushion and other times she would throw trash away in the clothes hamper.
We moved through the rooms of our house slowly so that I could show her what things were. We turned doorknobs to open doors up and looked into the different rooms of our house to show her what they were for. We turned water faucets on and off. We turned the coffee maker, the lamps, the television, and all the other appliances on and off too.
She was still surprised that turning a switch on made the ceiling fan turn on or made the living room fill up with light. She was still surprised when she heard somebodyâs voice through the telephone, or when the people on the television started talking or the voices on the radio started talking or singing. She forgot more and more about our house and us until she couldnât always remember my name or why I was helping her get up or eat and then she forgot how to stand up or open her mouth up or say my name or move her arms.
She couldnât get up out of her chair for our walk across the living room to the dining room with her walker. I couldnât help her enough so that she could do it either. So I brought a small table from our spare bedroom out to her in the living room and set it down around her legs. I brought her food out to her too and set it down on the small table in front of her.
It was still too hard for her to sit up and she couldnât lean forward either. Her head had gotten too heavy for her neck and it would fall back against the headrest of her chair and her mouth would fall open a little bit. I would sit down next to her to hold her head up for her so that I could feed her food with a spoon. She couldnât open her mouth very much anymore and she could only chew slowly, but we still had all those long meals together. She would smile as much as she could after she had chewed and swallowed her food.
How Our House Had Gotten Too Old Too
Our house had gotten too old and started to die too. The paint was peeling off it so that the wood was showing through in places. The wood had gotten soft in places too and there were too many moldy age spots growing on it to replace it.
Some of the shingles had come off the roof and I would find them in the bushes around our house and scattered around the front yard and the backyard too. There were cracks in the windowpanes
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