“On vacations: We hit the sunny beaches where we occupy ourselves keeping the sun off our skin, the saltwater off our bodies, and the sand out of our belongings.”
~Erma Bombeck
It started as a good idea that seemed to just get better. Go on vacation. Get Jan away from her stress about having Diane in the house, get me away from the stress of working by day and caring for Jan at night. Instead, we'd trade the rainy gloom of Tokyo in winter for Hawaiian sun! Sleep late. Sit on a beach. Go to dinner. Let the slow sunsets and easy trade winds of Maui calm and soothe.
I love how drivers on Maui will often pull over to the side of the road that runs along the ocean and get out of their cars, lean against a fender, and just watch the sunset. It's like hitting the pause button on life. And aren't vacations really a pause button, an escape, a chance to shed our daily work clothes and step out of real life?
We had been going to Maui for some years as the girls got older. It was an easy half-way trip; we flew in from Asia, they from the mainland. Everyone spent about the same time on an airplane and there were beaches and snorkeling calling to us all. We always stayed in the same general area around Kapalua and Kahana. It meant that one nearby video rental place still had us in its computer and we knew where the coffee and eggs were in the local grocery store.
What a perfect place to take Jan for a break because here she might remember familiar places, and the sun and bright skies would cheer her up. And maybe cheer me up? The Alzheimer's came along with us, of course, but now I was used to that. The third day we were there, standing in a rental condo and looking west across the water, Jan gazed out the window and said, “Where are we?”
“Can't you tell,” I asked. “Look out the window.”
“It looks nice,” she said.
“We're on Maui.”
“Oh yes, I knew that,” she replied, when she clearly had not known. The conversation slowed to a stop as she stared at the water.
I still didn't know if she remembered visiting Maui before. The memories of us with the girls were long gone for her. And sometimes it had been just the two of us on vacation and that, too, seemed lost. But in fact, it was okay on this trip. I didn't care about missing memories, and I certainly wasn't about to get depressed on Maui. We got into swimsuits and hung out on the lawn at the condo, or waded into the ocean.
I have a picture from that trip; Jan is beaming with the smile that changes her whole face. She is standing in her swimsuit near the beach, happy in the hot sun. By the time I took the picture she had figured out where we were and was in the moment. It didn't matter if that moment would be lost as the next moment came along. It was enough that she was happy right then.
And it was here, for whatever unforgivable reason, that I would lose my temper with her. And when the dam broke, I couldn't stop myself.
It started because, as always, we wanted to look at real estate. An agent took us to see some houses on the hills above the town of Lahaina, where New England whaling ships once pulled in after their kills in the nearby waters where the whales would come to winter with their young. The houses on the hill were lovely. We liked one or two in particular and decided to have the agent drive us back for a second look. I was in my Maui uniform, a swimsuit and t-shirt, how Hawaiian, right? Since I didn't have pockets, I put the keys to the rental car in Jan's purse and put my wallet in the trunk of the rental car. We left the car parked at the condo complex and took off with the agent.
We saw several houses that day before the agent dropped us back at our condo. We were back for only a few minutes when I asked Jan for the car keys. “They're in your purse,” I said matter-of-factly.
“Okay,” she said. Then the ominous words from her, “Where is my purse?”
How could she not have her purse? She had never, not once, either lost her purse or gone out without one. I figured it was tucked away somewhere in the condo where she put it when we got back. “Where is it?” I repeated. We looked around. It doesn't take long to search a one-bedroom condo. No purse. “But you had it when we left,” I pointed out, “because I put the car keys into it.”
“I guess.”
Maybe it was being tired from jet lag, maybe it was being tired from coping with the constant forgetfulness, but I got angry. Gritting my teeth, I said, “Darling, we can't go anywhere because the car keys are in your purse.”
She stared at me and said nothing. There was nothing in her eyes that showed if she even understood. I started working the phones. Our real estate agent had caught a plane to a different island. No help there. I called the listing agent of one house we visited and where I suspected Jan left her purse. No luck there, either, since all I got was her voice mail. I then called the car rental agency, which was located at the airport on the other side of the island. Was there another set of keys, by chance? No. And there was a fee for making a new key because, these days, keys aren't cut at the local hardware store while you wait. They are electronic and it costs to have a new one programmed for a particular car. And how to get it to me … would they deliver the keys? Hawaiian hospitality ended at that point. No, they would not. They would give any new key to a cab driver who would bring it to me, but it would cost about a hundred dollars in cab fare.
I hung up and tried calling a local locksmith. Didn't people still do this? Yes, but for modern cars with electronic keys it takes time to get the codes, and it will be expensive and the rental car agency may not like a non-original key. But this was just a Ford, dammit. Can't people make a quick ordinary key for an ordinary damn Ford?
No.
Another try at the listing agent. Another request to leave a voice mail. Through it all, through this onslaught of people telling me what they couldn't do, Jan stood quietly in the kitchen, impassive. There wasn't a flicker of recognition that we were spending a precious afternoon of vacation not at the beach or relaxing, but dealing with car keys, and it was going to get pricey.
It was her impassivity and unawareness of what was going on that pushed me over the edge. I lost it. I don't remember ever shouting at her before, but I shouted now. “Don't you understand? We can't go anywhere! And my wallet is in the trunk, and that means we have no money or credit cards. We can't even buy groceries or go to dinner or buy a sandwich because every penny is in the wallet. Don't you get it … don't you see what you did?”
I look back at this with shame because I was yelling at her when she had no idea what she had done, and no ability to understand my anger. Instead, she stared back with no emotion. My words are burned onto my soul. It was the rage I had always directed at others, but never at her. How could I blame her for something she hadn't done and for something that terrified her? What kind of person had I become?
I close my eyes now and can still hear her scared, shaking voice from the early days of The Disease. “I'm losing my mind, aren't I?” I heard it then, too, even as my anger exploded. How could I be so angry? She hadn't done this on purpose. She was barely aware of what she had done. Maybe not even aware.
I reached down somewhere deep and calmed down before calling the rental car company, where I ordered the new key and had a taxi bring it across the island. About ninety minutes later, the taxi showed up. I was handing over a hundred dollar bill for the cab fare when my cell phone rang. It was the listing agent. She was sorry, she'd accidentally put her phone in the trunk of her car and missed my calls. A quick call to the people in the house and, yes, they had the purse. She offered to come pick us up.
In the end, it was a simple mix-up easily fixed, even if I was out a hundred bucks. I looked down at my new hundred-dollar replacement key and said to the agent, “thanks, but I can get there in my car.” Jan and I drove back to the house, where the couple graciously handed over Jan's purse.
At this point, Shakespeare would say: “All's well that ends well.” But it wasn't. How could I reach the point of being so frustrated that my anger erupted and I turned it on Jan? I wondered whether I was now the sick one, the one without perspective, the one whose emotions were so raw that I attacked the one person least able to understand, let alone know enough to even say, “I'm sorry, darling,” because she had no idea why I was so furious.
For the rest of the week, even as I helped her relax in the surf or go out for lunch or dinner, I could still hear me shouting at her … “Don't you understand?” … and from farther back, from a moment of her still having awareness and fear, her words … “I'm losing my mind, aren't I?”
I was the one she trusted most, the one she needed most. What had I become?