I had to see his address twice before I could make myself believe it.
The agency had given me the assignment on a Tuesday. Three overnight shifts a week, an elderly man with dementia, help with meals and medication, keep him safe until morning.
Eleven dollars an hour.
I needed the work, so I said yes before asking many questions.
Then I looked at the address.
I sat in my car with the paper resting on the steering wheel. I read the street name, then the number, then the street name again.
I knew that house.
For thirty-one years, I had lived there with Gordon Pryce.
He had been my husband long before dementia took pieces of his memory. He had also been the man who left me in 2003 for Charlene, the woman who worked in his insurance office.
I had not seen the inside of that house in years.
I could have called the agency and said the assignment wasn't suitable. I could have told them I knew the client and let them find someone else.
Instead, I folded the paper and put it in my purse.
I needed the money.
That was true, but it wasn't the whole truth.
I wanted to know whether Gordon was being looked after. I wanted to know if he was eating properly, if he was frightened at night, if he had anyone sitting nearby when the rooms became unfamiliar.
Thirty-one years leaves a person with questions that don't always disappear when the marriage does.
I had carried mine for so long that I hardly noticed them anymore.
On the first evening, I parked in the driveway and stayed behind the wheel until I saw the porch light.
It was on.
I remember that because Gordon used to insist on turning it off whenever we went to bed. He said there was no sense paying for electricity to light an empty porch.
Some things stay in your head long after the person who said them has forgotten.
Charlene opened the door wearing a neat blazer and holding her car keys. She looked like someone who had already run late and was trying not to let the next thing make her later.
She didn't recognize me.
I couldn't tell whether that hurt or relieved me.
She showed me the kitchen first. There was a medication list on the counter, a baby monitor beside the fruit bowl, and a pill organizer that looked recently filled.
She explained which meals Gordon would eat and where the spare blankets were kept.
“He gets unsettled toward evening,” she said. “If he says something unpleasant, don't let it bother you.”
I told her I understood.
She checked her watch.
Then she left.
I stood in the kitchen for a moment after the front door shut.
I had imagined returning to that house more times than I wanted to admit. In some versions, I walked through the rooms and remembered everything. In others, I said something to Gordon that finally made him understand what he had done.
I had never imagined coming back as a woman hired by the hour.
The house smelled faintly of furniture polish and the soup Charlene had left warming instructions for.
Nothing looked quite the way I remembered it.
The kitchen counters had changed. The curtains were different. The old table was still there, though, and I recognized a scratch along one edge where Gordon had once dragged a heavy toolbox across it.
I didn't touch it.
He was in a recliner in the living room, facing a television with the sound turned off.
His hair had gone thin. His shoulders looked smaller beneath his sweater. His hands rested on the arms of the chair as though he had forgotten what else they were supposed to do.
I stood where he could see me.
He looked straight at my face.
For one foolish second, I waited.
Then he asked, “Are you the new girl?”
“Yes,” I said. “I'm here to help you tonight.”
I kept my voice steady.
He gave a small nod and returned his attention to the television.
That was all.
I went down the hall to the bathroom and turned on the tap. There was no reason to leave the water running, but I stood there listening to it until my breathing settled.
I was seventy years old. I had worked as a home health aide long enough to know how to enter a stranger's house, learn a routine, and keep my private feelings out of the work.
I had not expected to need those skills so badly in my former home.
When I returned, Gordon was still in the chair.
I warmed his soup and carried it to the small table beside him. He ate slowly, pausing between spoonfuls to look at the screen.
He finished about half.
Then his eyelids began to droop, and before I had rinsed the bowl, he was asleep.
I watched his chest rise beneath the loose sweater.
He was breathing comfortably.
I told myself that was what mattered.
The next shift, I arrived with the same agency bag and the same instructions. Charlene showed me nothing new. She was already preparing to leave when I came through the door.
By then, I had begun to understand how much she depended on those three nights.
She moved quickly through the house, checking her phone, collecting her purse, and reminding me where the medication list was kept.
She didn't linger.
I didn't blame her for wanting to leave. Caring for someone who could no longer reliably recognize the people around him was difficult, and I knew she had been doing it before I arrived.
I also knew I had no right to judge her life from the doorway.
Still, when she drove away, I sometimes felt as if the house had handed me back something I had lost without asking whether I wanted it.
The first week passed quietly.
Gordon slept for long stretches. He needed reminders about the bathroom and sometimes asked the same question several times in a row.
I answered him each time.
I didn't tell him who I was.
There seemed little kindness in making him struggle toward a memory he might not reach.
After three weeks, I knew his habits well enough to anticipate some of his needs.
His socks were in the second dresser drawer. The first held folded shirts, though he occasionally insisted that his socks belonged there.
He liked his soup hotter than I expected. If it cooled too much, he would take a spoonful, frown, and set the spoon down.
He also had a particular way of arranging his things.
If I put the spoon on the napkin beside the bowl, he left it alone. If I laid it directly on the table, he moved it to the napkin himself.
I started placing it where he wanted.
He never thanked me for that. He didn't need to.
Sometimes the old Gordon appeared for a few seconds, and I would hear something familiar in his voice.
One night, he asked whether the porch lamp had been left burning.
I told him it was on.
“That's a waste,” he said. “Nobody needs a light when everyone's inside.”
I nearly smiled.
That was Gordon. The same complaint, the same certainty, the same belief that a few pennies saved on electricity meant something important.
He had said it hundreds of times when we were married.
I wondered if he remembered the porch light but not the woman who had stood beside him beneath it.
I never asked.
On another evening, I dropped a spoon while clearing his bowl.
It hit the floor with a sharp clatter.
Gordon looked over.
“We used to keep plenty in the drawer,” he said. “Never knew when we'd need another.”
I picked up the spoon.
He had spoken as though he were remembering an old household, but he didn't look at me for confirmation. His eyes drifted back toward the television before I could decide whether to answer.
I liked hearing those scraps of his former self.
That was something I had trouble admitting, even to myself.
The man in the chair had hurt me. I hadn't forgotten the divorce or the years of learning how to live without the future I thought we had agreed to share.
But the memories that surfaced in him belonged to a life I had lived, too.
I could resent what he had done and still recognize his voice.
I could remember the pain and still be glad when he had a peaceful evening.
Those feelings did not cancel each other out.
One Tuesday, Charlene came home earlier than usual.
I had helped Gordon settle into his chair, and the television was playing a baseball game with the volume turned up. He was awake, following the action with more interest than I had seen in him before.
Charlene stopped in the doorway.
“He seems calmer when you're here,” she said.
I told her he had eaten most of his dinner and had been watching the game for a while.
She smiled at him.
Then she thanked me and put a little plate of cookies on the kitchen counter for my next shift.
They were plain cookies with a thick layer of sugar on top.
I ate two in my car before driving home.
I don't know why I remember that so clearly. Perhaps because it was an ordinary kindness, and ordinary kindness can be difficult to sort out when you are already carrying old hurt.
Charlene had no idea who I was.
To her, I was a reliable aide who knew where Gordon kept his socks and how hot he liked his soup.
I could have corrected her.
I could have told her that I had once shared his bed, paid bills with him, and stood in the kitchen while he complained about the cost of keeping the porch light on.
But I didn't.
I came to work, did what he needed, entered my notes, and went home.
For a while, that arrangement seemed simple enough.
Then I began noticing the empty spaces.
Source: blog.giatheficoco.com
Click here to continue reading: PART 2: The Furniture Disappeared One Piece at a Time, and the Extra White Pill in His Organizer Made Me Afraid to Look Away
I Accepted an Ordinary Caregiving Job Until I Recognized the Address and Realized Whose Nights I Was Being Paid to Sit Through
Part 1 of 8
