Eleven Kinds of Mourning
by Todd M. Davidson
2. Along Came April
George and Jean Hall were happily married accountants. They both obsessed over their financial future for years, but in the 49 years together, they had saved more than enough to retire comfortably and never had children. Just before they came upon their golden years, they finally retired and began traveling the country to visit the many states and places they had planned to see for years. They visited several monuments, museums and roadside attractions, and made sure to see the Grand Canyon, Lake Tahoe, and Mount Rushmore. Seeing their efforts become fruitful created a memorable period in their lives. The period faded, however, when George started experiencing sudden problems with his memory and concentration.

After an appointment with a third doctor, he, too, felt George was experiencing the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s disease. George became terrified and felt the worst possible plague known to mankind was upon him.

His condition worsened fast, much faster than Jean or George imagined. Within months, George’s memory problems began to affect him more often and became worse. On the nights when George couldn’t sleep, he had an old habit of going for walks in the dark, but with his condition worsening, he soon began getting lost in his own neighborhood. George would even become lost and confused a few houses away from his own home. He would then knock on the nearest front door, which happened to be his neighbor’s door a few times, to ask for help or directions home. Jean knew the late night walks had to stop. The thought of George out lost somewhere in the neighborhood was too much for her to overlook, so she demanded George stay home at night. Some nights, however, George would wake up in the middle of the night and wouldn’t recognize the inside of his own home. He would then sneak out the front door only to end up lost in the neighborhood again. Between Jean waking up horrified to find herself alone in the house, and her being woken by calls from the police department after they found George lost, Jean decided to have a new lock installed to solve the problem.

George getting lost at night alone didn’t cause Jean to consider other options for him, but he began wetting himself, and when he choked on food for the second time because he forgot he was chewing something, enough was enough. She didn’t want to be in a position she couldn’t handle, especially if an emergency happened again, and she didn’t want to live in fear either. She knew she had to do something, and that something had to be right away.
Jean struggled to ignore the smell inside the Rainbow Nursing Home. The hallways stunk daily of antiseptics and human waste. The elderly residents, however, had no escape. They had to endure the stench. Jean knew if she showed pity it would be harming to the residents, so she didn’t. The most difficult part of being at the nursing home for Jean was when she walked down the hallway to George’s room. Within the rooms along that hallway, she could see the pain in the elderly residents’ faces looking back at her. She could see they were humbled in their individual submissions, believing they themselves were the unwanted in society, too old to be productive and too young to die. Along every hallway, many just waited for their end in a solemnly patient manner. Though ignored at night, outbursts and pleadings to be left alone were heard echoing along the empty gray halls and glossy dark floors. Seven of the twenty-four neon lights along the hallway to George’s room flickered, ready to finally burn out at any moment, but the bulbs were rarely replaced.