“Stay in bed this time or I will have to sit on the floor by the door and nobody wants that.”

“I am just looking for the keys to the shed because the rain is coming and the tractor is out.”

“There is no tractor anymore and it is middle of the night so please just put your feet back under the quilt.”

She leads him by the elbow and his skin feels like paper and his eyes are wide and dark and full of a panic that does not belong in a quiet house. He does not know who she is right now and he only knows the tractor is in the rain and the rain is a threat.

This is the fourth time since midnight and the clock on the bedside table says three twenty-one and the rest of the world is a graveyard of silent houses. She tucks the blanket around his knees and she speaks in the low voice she used for their children forty years ago and she waits for his breathing to change. It takes eleven minutes for his shoulders to drop and then she stands up and her back feels like it is made of dry sticks and she walks to the kitchen.

The Night shift Shadows

She does not turn on the light because the light is an enemy that wakes the brain too fast and she sits at the table and she stares at the sink. The shadows in the kitchen are long and gray and they seem to move when she blinks her eyes.

She thinks about the orange she peeled earlier today and how she managed to get the skin off in one perfect spiral and how that felt like a victory in a life where everything else is falling apart in jagged pieces. She reaches for the kettle and she finds it is still warm from the last time she was up and she wonders if she is still the same woman she was at dinner time.

The world thinks the day ends when the sun goes down and they think caregiving is a series of appointments and meals and pills. They see the daughter or the wife at the grocery store and they see a tired woman but they do not see the soldier who has been awake for twenty hours straight.

Dementia does not follow the laws of the moon and it does not respect the need for a body to shut down and repair its own cells. It is a fire that burns brightest when the house is dark and it turns the familiar hallway into a forest where a man can get lost between the bathroom and the bedroom.

The Weight of What Stays

I talked to Carter F. not long ago and he works as a hazmat disposal coordinator so he knows all about the things that people want to look away from. He told me that his job is not just about the chemicals or the mess but it is about the weight of what stays behind after the trucks leave the driveway.

“You can clean a room until the walls are white and the floor is sterile but the memory of the crisis still lives in the corners of the ceiling and it stays there until someone acknowledges it.”

Caregiving is much the same way because the morning arrives and the neighbors see a clean porch and a mowed lawn and they have no idea that a war was fought in the hallway at four in the morning.

A Strange and Heavy Math

If you look at the math of it you find a strange and heavy truth that most people would rather ignore. A person who looks after a spouse with memory loss is doing the work of three full-time jobs every single week and they are doing it with less rest than a long-haul trucker or a surgeon on a double shift.

In plain terms it means the average caregiver is losing about four hundred hours of deep sleep every year and that is like trying to drive a car across the country while someone is throwing rocks at the windshield. It is not just being tired and it is a slow erosion of the self and it happens in the hours when no one is watching and no one is there to offer a glass of water.

The house at night is a different country and the rules of logic do not apply there and the woman at the kitchen table knows this better than anyone. She hears a floorboard creak and her heart jumps into her throat and she waits to see if he is coming back out or if it was just the house settling into the cold.

She thinks about the tractor and she wishes there really was a tractor because a tractor is a solid thing that you can fix with a wrench and a bit of oil. You cannot fix a brain that is losing its way and you can only guide it back to the bed and hope for an hour of peace before the sun touches the window.

Society is built around the nine to five and the shops close and the banks close and the doctors go home and the caregiver is left in a void where there is no help. The government and the insurance companies and the neighbors assume that sleep is a given and they assume that if you are at home you are resting.

They have no category for the person who never clocks out and they have no name for the labor that leaves no paper trail and no paycheck. It is a ghost economy and it is powered by the blood and the nerves of women and men who are too tired to complain.

A Watchman for the Watchstander

It is a heavy weight to carry and most families try to do it alone until they realize that they are disappearing and that is why

Caring Shepherd

exists because they know the night is longer than the day and they know the kitchen floor stays cold even when the heater is on.

They understand that dignity is not just a word for the daytime and it is something that must be guarded at three in the morning when the confusion is at its peak.

The Bank Teller’s World

She drinks her tea and it is cold and it tastes like metal and she thinks about how she will have to go to the bank tomorrow and talk about interest rates and signatures. She will have to put on a face that says she is a normal person who slept for eight hours and she will have to answer questions and she will have to be polite.

The bank teller will not see the bruises on her soul and the teller will not see the way her hands shake when she reaches for a pen. The world demands that we hide the night shift and it demands that we pretend the sun cures all the things that broke in the dark.

Carter F. says that the hardest part of his job is the silence after the sirens stop and he says the silence is where the real damage is measured. The wife in the kitchen knows that silence well and she knows it is not a peaceful thing and it is a heavy thing that sits on your chest and makes it hard to breathe.

She thinks about the tractor again and she smiles a little bit because at least he remembered he had a tractor and at least he wanted to save it from the rain. There is a small mercy in the memories that remain and she holds onto that mercy like it is a lifeline and she prays that it stays until the morning.

The Dawn Victory

The clock says four twelve and the sky is starting to turn a deep and bruised purple and she knows the day is coming whether she is ready for it or not. She will make the coffee and she will help him dress and she will answer the same questions twenty times before noon and she will do it all with a heart that is still back in the hallway in the dark.

She will look at the stove and the sink and the table and she will see the battlefield where she won a small and invisible victory and she will keep it to herself.

People think that dementia is a long goodbye and they think it is a fading out of the light but it is actually a very loud and very busy process that requires every ounce of strength a human can muster. It is a job that requires the patience of a saint and the stamina of an athlete and the heart of a mother and it is all done for a person who might not remember your name by breakfast.

It is the purest kind of love because it expects nothing in return and it continues when there is no audience and no reward.

She stands up and she puts the cup in the sink and she walks back toward the bedroom and she moves like a person walking on eggshells. She peers into the dark and she sees the shape of him under the quilt and he is still and he is safe and for this moment the tractor is forgotten.

She lies down on top of the covers and she keeps her shoes on because she knows she might have to get up again in twenty minutes. She closes her eyes and she feels the house breathing around her and she waits for the light to break the spell of the night.

The sun finally hits the top of the trees and the birds start to make their noise and the world begins to wake up and move. The milkman drives by and the neighbors turn on their porch lights and the first bus of the day rumbles down the street at the end of the block.

Inside the house the woman opens her eyes and she looks at the man sleeping next to her and she wonders what his dream was about. She hopes it was about the tractor and she hopes the sun was shining in the dream and she hopes the rain never came.

She gets out of bed and she starts the day and she knows she will do it all again when the sun goes down because that is what a watchstander does.