Changes

I did bring my uke to Jeff’s today. I’ve sort of been avoiding it because of any of the following reasons--I don’t play well. I don’t sing well. I play and sing worse when I’m aware that any other human ears might hear me. I didn’t want anyone to make even the tiniest of big deals out of it. And I didn’t know if Jeff would even register the sound. But I had to try it so that I wouldn’t end up having to admit that I never tried it.

When I walked in this afternoon, Jeff was stumbling in a circle in the now-normal forward list. It was a movement that suggested “bathroom” to me, so I led him immediately to do his business, thus scoring an opportunity to deploy the ukulele in the relative seclusion of Jeff’s room, with only his roommate Richard on the other side, sitting in Richard’s usual chair.

Jeff almost never sees me anymore, because he cannot look. I mean "look" as in a "Hail fellow human, I acknowledge thee," kind of way. There is virtually no “periscope up” function left. If he has a periscope at all, it’s locked in its shaft, turning aimlessly to perceive the plain walls which surround it.

But, in the auditory sphere, music worked for a while there. Lately, not so much. Yesterday, Olivia and I sang a few bars of Frère Jaques for him, and he nodded along briefly in recognition before retracting his receivers. So when I next tried Paul McCartney on the iPhone, it drew no acknowledgment.

But uke--that’s live music, maybe he’d notice. In a less bad than my worst performance, I plunked out Simon & Garfunkel’s Feelin’ Groovy, because anyone who’s capable should respond to that. I don’t think he noticed at all. I said, “do you know that song?” From the other side of the room, came Richard’s deep “No.”

So, the music appreciation patches in his brain appear to have largely been overgrown by tangles. These things do go. He is leaning forward too much, and I expect he will be falling on his face fairly frequently. Soon, I expect they will ask me to supply a wheelchair if getting him around for meals gets increasingly wobbly and time-intensive.

I’ve watched Linda. She is young like Jeff. When Jeff moved in, Linda was doing what Jeff does now--shuffling about speaking gibberish if not dozing in a chair. In a matter of a few months, she’s stopped being ambulatory, stopped babbling, stopped being responsive, and most recently has been so contracted into a bent over position that feeding her had become nearly impossible.

Today, as I left Jeff in his IKEA chair, and exited with my uke, I passed Linda’s door. Several relatives were coming out. It was not a good time to be nosy and inquisitive, but I am certain that Linda is either very far along in her hospice journey, if not finished with it. I will find out soon.