Hello Again

***

Dementia was never a pretty thing, those who had older parents with the disease knew how heartbreaking and hard it could be to deal with it and stay strong during the moments that wanted to make them break down the most. Levi, a loving husband and a father of two never deserved what was coming his way, he was only forty-one when it happened... when he started to forget.

It was small things at first, forgetting where his phone was, where he had put his keys, the minimal things but things only got worse from there. He had started to forget about names and dates, then bigger things like where he had parked the car and where he lived. It had worried his wife and children, but his kids were too young to understand what was really happening. Audrey, his wife of twelve years, knew that there was something seriously wrong with him, she had never known him to forget and had always admired him for his strong memory.

On the way to the specialist Audrey had a sinking feeling in her stomach, understanding that there may have been something seriously wrong with her husband, but she was praying to every god she knew of in the hopes that they would cure him of his ailment and allow him to live out his days happily and without worrying. The ten minutes that they had to wait in the office had been the longest ten minutes she could ever remember, it had never occurred to her that this would be a real situation that she would face.

"Where are we?" Levi asked the woman beside him, not exactly knowing that it was his loving and devoted wife,

"The doctor's office honey, we're finding out what's wrong with you." Audrey's breath caught in her throat as the door opened behind her, she couldn't see the expression on the specialist's face, but the feeling of the room changed dramatically and nothing good was going to come out of his mouth. Her suspicions had been confirmed when her husband was formally diagnosed with dementia, it was awful to hear, and it almost felt like she had a piece of duct tape covering her mouth, inhibiting her from speaking. That was the worst day of her entire life and she would never forget it for as long as she lived.

***

It had been almost two years since the diagnosis and nothing had grown better, Levi had proceeded to have trouble remembering and it was getting harder and more troublesome to have him by Audrey's side, it burned too much to have him ask her who she was only to declare repeatedly that she was his spouse. She felt so lonely, so lost in her approach in helping him and she knew that it was doing nothing, he was getting worse and there was absolutely nothing that she could do to stop it. There had not been any sort of medical advancement in treating dementia and she doubted that there would be in their lifetime and it hurt her emotionally to know that her lovely Levi wouldn't have the pleasure of remembering his children's names or knowing who his own wife was.

Audrey sighed softly to herself as she stood in their decent sized kitchen, the marble bench-top feeling cold against her warm fingers, a flash caught her brown eyes and she looked at the wedding ring that she had been wearing for all those years, it seemed like only yesterday they had gotten married, but she was well aware that it had been many, many years. The hissing of the kettle caught her attention and she moved her golden hair behind her ears, walking over to the kettle and taking it off the stove to make sure that the water wouldn't boil over and get all over the hot electric stove. She was in the process of making Levi tea as he sat in the lounge room, watching some home movies that she hoped would kickstart some of his memories, she knew that it wasn't what the professionals would do but she didn't mind. Her slender fingers opened the cupboard and grasped the mug that Levi was the fondest of, he didn't remember that it was his favourite but each time he saw it he would tell her that he liked that mug, each time forgetting that he had already told her that information.