He had left her in the study and went to bed. Biddy had stayed up for hours turning the house upside down for clues as to what she had forgotten. He did not sleep a wink that night and many more to follow when his wife was on a mission to locate a misplaced item.
Fortunately, they eventually passed that very awkward period of her life and these days she no longer seemed to care and no longer wasted her time in agony over the spilled beans of her mind. He wondered if that was part of her complex drug regime. He suspected that the doctors had slipped her an anti-depressant or a sedative of sorts into her cocktail of daily pills. He would rather not know and so he never asked about it and only ever read the dosage instructions on the prescription sheet.
Biddy’s manners these days were innocent and childlike. Her optimism and her famous positive attitude had been the core of her character and she had helped many of her friends and family to overcome crisis after crisis with her unbreakable spirit.
Watching her being happy and joyful while feeding the stupid ducks he felt that, for a moment, everything was just as it always had been. He could see the young woman he had married underneath the wrinkles, the white hair and behind the blank stare she often had these days when she got confused.
Right now the bright light of her essence was visible and it warmed Walter on the inside. Such moments gave him the necessary strength to accept the things he was missing from his married life of late.
They were sitting on a familiar bench with their bicycles leaning against it and he observed the traffic behind the edge of the park. It was a happy place for the Korhonen family, a tradition they had created with all of their children. Each one of them had adored coming here and feeding the birds. He thought he recognised a few pedestrians and cyclists passing by. There were friends and acquaintances who he was sure must have seen him and Biddy but who obviously had decided not to come over and say hello. No one was to blame. It took a lot of courage and emotional strength to speak to Biddy if you didn’t know how to.
“More bread?” Biddy called out to her husband.
“I am sorry darling. That was all we have. Let’s come here again tomorrow, I am sure someone else will come today and feed them. They won’t be hungry for long. I am getting chilly; maybe we could grab a cup of tea somewhere? What do you say?”
“Hot chocolate!” his wife said. “And cake. Do you think we can afford that? Did we bring enough money?”
“Of course we have,” Walter replied. When she used language like ‘enough money’ and ‘afford it’, it seemed an indicator that she had retreated once more into the vault of her past. Judging from her craving for a hot chocolate Walter guessed she had assumed the age of a teenager and was probably thinking of him as one of her brothers. Whether she thought of him as her husband at all any more, or whether she had merely accepted him as the familiar person she saw every day was something he tried desperately not to contemplate. He feared the day when she would stop recognising him and maybe even stop tolerating him being in the same room with her. He knew from a film he had once seen that this might happen.
At a modern coffee shop just outside the pedestrianized area, Biddy chose a flapjack from the cake display to go with her hot chocolate.
“I didn’t bring my purse.”
“That is quite all right,” Walter assured her. “I have money.”
“Good morning Mrs Korhonen,” said the waitress.
“No,” Biddy told her. “My name is Biddy. Short for Elizabeth. Elizabeth Hargreaves.”
It hurt him to hear her rejecting their family name after almost fifty years of marriage, seeing more of their past drifting away. If she could not remember marrying him, did he still have the right to even call her his wife and to take care of her?
“Fine, Biddy. Are you two ready to order?” said the waitress smiling. She served the odd couple at least twice a week and her way of dealing with the situation was to humour Biddy. It was something which Walter strongly disliked but which he had learned to accept, especially when it came from friendly and obviously well-meaning strangers. It still felt as if he and Biddy were being patronised, though.
Hanna would have approved of the belittling way the waitress was treating his wife and would have encouraged her to carry on. Maybe that was how people in the service industry treated everyone who was slightly different from the norm, just so that they could carry on with their job. Walter let out a deep sigh of frustration and then placed their order.
While they were waiting for their drinks an old school friend of Biddy came into the coffee shop and walked straight up to their table.
“Hello Biddy! How are you?” the woman asked.
“Good, thank you for asking,” was the almost automatic response. “How are you?”
It would not have been obvious to an outsider whether Biddy had recognised her friend or not. Biddy had dropped tricky details, such as names, from her conversations a long time ago.
“Do you know who I am?” the friend asked directly but luckily she decided to give the answer away before putting Biddy cruelly on the spot. “I am Minnie. Minnie Crook. Or maybe you remember me as Minnie Chadwick. We went to school together. I married Martin Crook.”
“Of course, of course!” Biddy said with apparent lack of conviction. “How is he?”
“Oh sweetheart, Martin died a few years ago. You went to the funeral.”
“I am sorry Minnie; her memory has deteriorated since you last saw her. I am not sure she recognises you at all,” Walter interrupted, trying to rescue the situation.
“But I do recognise you!” Biddy insisted. “You look more like your mother now.”
“That is right,” Minnie said laughing. “I am old now. Just say it like it is,” but turning to Walter she mouthed: “You poor thing.”
“It is quite all right,” he reassured her. “Biddy and I are just fine. What are you doing in town? How are your children?”
Minnie looked nervously at Biddy, unsure whether to involve her in the conversation or better just to speak to Walter alone.
“I just came into town to return my books to the library. Since Martin...you know...I have been reading a lot, something I did not have enough time for before he...well, the kids are fine I guess. Ryan is now a lecturer at the university and Emma is pregnant again. That will be her fourth and from her third marriage. I told her it is madness. She is 43. You know what they say about giving birth at that age and it is not as if there aren’t enough children in the world already as it is. But it is a new man and she wants to seal the union with a child. I am worried sick that it will come out with a defect but Emma says the scans are all fine.”
Walter sat dumbfounded by this verbal assault and the use of double negatives, but he managed to get out: “I am sure it will be all fine. You know modern technology and medicine have come a long way since our days. Especially with giving birth, the doctors have perfected their ways. I wouldn’t worry. If only they had advanced that far with old age and its side effects,” with a meaningful glance at his wife, who had followed the conversation, nodding with seemingly great interest yet with no indications that she knew what was being discussed.
“Well, I better go,” said Minnie quickly. “All the best. Bye Biddy, great seeing you!”
“Yes, nice meeting you too.”
After Minnie had left them there was an awkward silence. Walter found it difficult having to steer their conversations as much as he had to these days. He had always been the quiet one of the couple and had let his wife talk about whatever she wanted to. Now that she was less forthcoming he had to rise to the challenge. In awkward moments like this, when he saw that she was struggling to make sense of what had just been said, he had to think quickly to come up with a new topic to distract her. The things he could easily discuss, such as football or sport, were not always suitable as they could easily confuse his wife. It pained him to see her helpless, feeling inadequate and deeply isolated. Yet, chatting away just wasn’t his forte and especially not when
he put himself under pressure, as he so often did.
The waitress brought a halt to his dark thoughts by bringing over their order and Biddy became completely besotted with her flapjack, which took up all of her attention and seemed to reboot her mind.
After they had finished, Walter went to pay the bill while Biddy went to the ladies’ room. Luckily today she came back out properly dressed and tidy; he was paranoid after she had once locked herself in a cubicle and had a hard time getting back out. He knew that the mundane and mechanical tasks in life were still generally easy to perform for his wife but some days the responsibility for her weighed heavily on him and after what he thought had been an embarrassing interlude with Minnie, he felt it particularly keenly.
The couple went into a small supermarket on the way home and bought some provisions. Biddy had become very quiet and obedient, as if she was sensing that Walter felt stressed and needed some respite. He thought she looked almost subdued and sad and it made him feel guilty. It was her who was suffering, her who had lost touch with reality and who was isolated, yet even now she seemed to take responsibility for the family and its emotional wellbeing. Her caring attitude was still unbroken, underneath all of the confusion and mindlessness.
Chapter 3: Hanna
Hanna, in the meantime, had worked her way through step, Pilates and yoga classes. It had done her a world of good and the predicted endorphin rush had certainly helped to make her feel more at ease. The despair of the night had vanished into the back of her mind and she spent several hours window shopping in Carnaby Street and Oxford Street. At least London was a great place for losing oneself in the masses and she enjoyed that nobody cared who she was or what she was doing.
She rang her parents’ house a few times but nobody answered and she decided not to leave a message in case it didn’t sound upbeat enough. She did not want to alarm her father about her own challenging state of affairs, only to sound him out if a visit would be helpful or even possible. She was unaware how far her mother’s condition had deteriorated over the last few months and suddenly felt guilty at the realisation of how long she had not been to see them. In light of the death on the plane, life seemed suddenly very fragile to the stewardess and she worried about her mother’s wellbeing.
Most of her London friends were working during the day and would not be able to spare more time for her than a quick hour at lunch – if that. Suburban people commuting into town normally had a schedule for those lunches and did not have the luxury of availability at short notice. Living a life of continuous change and frequent disruption, Hanna was not organised enough to plan meetings far enough ahead and so these lunch dates just didn’t happen anymore. In the big city of millions, where she had plenty of friends, Hanna often felt very lonely.
It was hard to keep a tab on where in the world her flying friends were at any given time; schedules rarely coincided favourably and this week was particularly bereft of companions.
She switched on her phone and browsed through the list of contacts but she could not decide if and whom to call. Without her initiative the phone sprang into action telling her of missed calls, text messages and voicemails but none of them inspired her. A few unknown numbers suggested that this was official business and she was not ready for that just yet. The only people she could think of to call right now were her two brothers, but neither of them answered their phones. She didn’t leave a message for them either. What was there to tell? She had just wanted to hear their voices.
She sat in a vegetarian restaurant run by Hare Krishna monks, an oasis of peace next to bustling and lively Soho Square. The place lacked decorations and was almost as clinical as a canteen, but the few other people here were smiling and happy. Hanna had hoped that their positive spirit might rub off on her and for a while it did, until she saw the pub next door, heaving with people laughing together and chatting away in large groups, seemingly without the slightest care in the world, and Hanna felt completely alone again. She ordered her food and picked up a newspaper but today she did not have the attention span to read anything either. A murder, an accident and a natural disaster in Asia – there was nothing but misery and a sense of doom settled itself over her mind.
In the Korhonen family home Biddy sat down with the same newspaper and read a few articles over and over, out loud, then quiet, then out loud again. While she was obviously enjoying herself, Walter had the opportunity to dedicate a little time to his hobbies. Since it was such a beautiful day he went outside to do some gardening, an activity that always relaxed him. The family had taken such pride in their garden and after he had retired, Walter had planted huge rows of vegetable and flower beds. There was a huge lawn and several fruit trees and bushes. At first he had tried to keep Biddy involved in the gardening, until she mistook weeding for harvesting and pulled out unripe potatoes and carrots instead of grass and other unwelcome plants in the beds. As his wife needed more supervision, he had less time to do the garden work. He now even employed a gardener but deeply resented having to waste so much money and not being able to do things himself.
His knee had been playing up for the last few years and was forcing him to give up some of his favourite sports as well: tennis was out of the question now and of course running, too. In a way it seemed good timing because if he were physically still able to do everything that he used to do, it would have been a bigger loss and much harder for him to care for Biddy in the same way. On the other hand, Biddy had been a distinctively loving and giving friend, mother and wife as long as he had known her, and maybe it would have been easy to sacrifice time and hobbies for her.
Since the signs of her disease had become more apparent, Walter found it much quieter in the garden than before. He noticed how overgrown the hedges had become and thought he could detect signs of neglect on the other side of it as well. He knew he had been too busy to trim them regularly, but to think that the enthusiastic gardeners next door had not cut back their side of it seemed unusual. Did they deliberately keep it thick like this so it would act as a visual shield? Or was that his paranoia again?
After half an hour of weeding, he started to get an uneasy feeling and decided to go inside and check up on Biddy. His son Henrik urged him never to leave Biddy alone at all, which Walter felt was far too dramatic. On the other hand, only the other day Biddy had tried to press clothes and had left the iron on top of one of his shirts on the board. It was only by chance that he had come into the room in time and prevented a fire. Better to be safe than sorry he thought and went inside. Reassuringly, Biddy was still reading the paper, peacefully and happy. ‘Well, enough of the gardening in any case’, he thought to himself and got ready to cook lunch.
Since Biddy had become ill, preparing food was another challenge for him. Even though she had been a good cook, there was now too much that could go wrong with an inattentive mind like hers: she would forget to stir, leave the gas switched on, walk away from the kitchen and start something entirely different. An accident was just waiting to happen. Walter had taken evening classes to learn the craft but he did so with little success.
Some friends, neighbours and relatives chipped in by bringing food for freezing or delivering fresh food every so often, possibly because they felt unable to help in any other way. Life would be easier with ready-made meals but he resented that idea. He had set his mind on it that he would repay his wife for all the good she had done in her life by taking responsibility for the feeding of the family himself, regardless of how humble his efforts were.
He had a long way to go but at least he had stopped burning most of his dishes and seemed to have grasped the basics. He was even able to make soups all by himself. He used a blender for his home grown vegetables and chose whatever needed to be eaten at the time. The ever changing and often unusual combinations of ingredients which he put together always tasted fine to him, even if Biddy often appeared less eager in devouring her portions.
At the beginning of his efforts, Biddy had taught him a trick or two but
she was in the dreadful beginning phase of the disease, where frustration dominated her every day and she had scolded him harshly for every mistake that he made.
“No, Walter!” she had cried out when he tried to make soup. “All you get is flour clumps if you do it like this. Where are you with your mind, can you tell me that? You have to keep stirring, not dream away and let everything burn. You will never get it, will you?”
The doctors had explained to him that he would have to expect this but it did surprise and hurt him all the same. As long as she was mentally clear enough to notice that she was becoming forgetful and made increasingly more mistakes, the frustration would eat away at her. He understood, of course, how hard this must be for her, and someone would have to get all her resulting anger: it was usually the people closest to the patient who did.
Biddy had been an industrious woman and still wanted to lend a hand whenever she saw things that needed to be done, but Walter preferred doing everything by himself now, rather than supervising her. Luckily she was much less argumentative than in earlier phases of her illness and much easier to distract. Today he made her read the paper to him while he was cooking, insisting that he really wanted to know what was going on in the world.
The soup was soon ready and Walter was just thinking about putting the pasta into the hot water when the phone rang. Biddy got up to answer it for him but that was no good. She often didn’t seem to understand the principle of telephones anymore and put the receiver down or – on her better days - she would tell the caller with the utmost regret that they had the wrong number and then she would hang up on them. Walter rushed to the phone and got to it just before Biddy.
“Yes. Hello?” he said hastily into the cordless handset and returned to the stove.
“Hi Dad, it’s me,” said Hanna.
“Hello Pumpkin. How are you?” he said absent-mindedly, while trying to put the pasta into the water and holding the handset with his neck at the same time. His chin must have pressed a button by mistake and the reply was drowned in a digital dialling tone.
Time to Let Go Page 3
