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This week’s Inspiration Monday challenge included the phrase, Ailing Mind. This piece is adapted from a blog I posted elsewhere, with names and some details changed to make it fictional.

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“Hi Joe. What’s up mate? You look like death.” Joe was a friend. We hadn’t seen each other for some time, but always kept in touch. Joe came in and sat at the kitchen table, Edna followed and walked straight through, in to the lounge.

He put his head in his hands, and sobbed like a lost child, “It’s Altzheimers.”
We’d known for some while that things weren’t right, but he seemed to be coping with it. Now, with the diagnosis confirmed the stress and distress were taking their toll.

While we consoled Joe in the kitchen, Edna wandered around, bewildered by her unfamiliar surroundings. She didn’t speak, her world was receding, becoming greyer. How much did she understand? She might respond with a nod or a smile, but who knows?

While she drifted my friend cried, his future as bleak as hers. The only difference is that he will notice the changes, and have to deal with them. Over the next few years the mind of the once intelligent and highly regarded professional will perish, leaving only the vehicle that once conveyed it. That, too, will fade and die. My friend will struggle with his inability to care for her as he would wish, and will surround himself with a deep depression. Whether his pain is for the suffering he will have to endure, or the slow loss of his loved partner, I don’t know. But suffer he will. It seems like a life worse than death.

“Another cuppa, Joe?”

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(c) 2012, K Patrick Moody

Inspired by the phase, Ailing mind on Inspiration Monday 20 Feb 2012