I’m finally admitting that ‘Mark and Evelyn’ doesn’t describe reality
For the first time in more than 50 years of marriage, I signed Easter greetings this year with only one name.
“Grandpa.” Not “Grandma and Grandpa.”
“Dad.” Not “Mom and Dad.”
My decision to include only one name on the gift card was my delayed admission of a reality I hadn’t named. The gifts were only from me—made possible by Evelyn’s retirement income, you could say. But I had chosen them. I had made sure they arrived before the holiday. I was sending them whether or not her name was attached.
It was a small acknowledgment of a fact that’s been with us longer than I realize. Evelyn hasn’t been participating in our gift-giving since I don’t know when. I would often bring home a greeting card for one of the kids or grandkids and ask her to sign her name beside mine. But for Easter, I decided not to do even that anymore. Everyone knows what’s really going on.
As long as I can remember
Adding her name had been just one more way to ignore what was really happening to us. For as long as I can remember, our life has been characterized by “Mark and Evelyn.”
Not professionally, mind you. We each had individual audiences and influence. Mine were wider, perhaps, because my name was on publications with international circulations. But if I was known more widely, I was certainly never loved more dearly. I beamed to see Evelyn’s warm interactions with colleagues and especially students at the college where she taught. For many years we seldom went to a local restaurant or the mall without bumping into one of them who hurried to say hello to her. She had worked hard and accomplished much in her own right, and I was proud.
But beyond that, I always thought of us as “Mark and Evelyn.” That’s how I signed the Christmas cards. That’s how we worded and received dinner invitations. We went to church together and sat together unless for some reason I was on the platform. In that case, I always looked for her in the congregation and stood with her later in the hallways.
But that’s different now.
I’m getting used to functioning all day every day as a completely individual unit. I’ll try to visit Evelyn daily, but always by my initiative and on my terms.
Now it’s “Mark with Evelyn” or “Mark for Evelyn.”
“Mark and Evelyn,” with two fully functioning, equally contributing partners, no longer exists.
The loss comes almost imperceptibly
Every widow or widower has faced this, but it’s different for them. They are no longer visiting the person they’ve lost. They’re no longer evaluating their care, making sure their medicine and other supplies have been ordered, or consulting about diet and doctors and clothes choices.
For some time I’ve thought about the disassociation that must happen to allow an Alzheimer’s caregiver to cope. In certain moments and for specific reasons, the caregiver must step back and concentrate solely on the person before them as a patient, with symptoms to be noted and problems to be solved and behaviors to be mitigated. But objectivity is difficult because it’s impossible not to care about the individual they’re losing.
And it’s easy to deny the loss when it comes almost imperceptibly, like the air in a tire with a very slow leak. At a glance, for a while, it looks as it always did. Then you see it’s flat and getting flatter, able to function but with severe limitations. Eventually, you realize it can never mean to you what it meant before.
You often can repair a tire, of course, but there is no fix for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. There’s only the inexorable hiss of loss, taunting you to try to find air to pump back into the life that’s slowly losing its shape. It’s exhausting to keep trying. It’s quietly sad to quit.
Now that Evelyn has moved to a care community, that’s what I’ve done. I can see the finality of change more honestly. I’m working to figure out what shape our life should take now.
Learning to balance
Evelyn seems to be satisfied in her new home. (When one of our friends visits her there, she loves to snap pictures. I’ve posted a few above.)
I’m learning to balance my concerns for her care there with my opportunities and responsibilities elsewhere. Yes, I’m free now to “be the husband” when I’m with her, but I haven’t figured out exactly what that can look like. It will take some time.
But now that we’re living at two separate addresses, others won’t refer to us or plan for us as “Mark and Evelyn.” Someday I’ll become accustomed to that. I’m not there yet.