The Man of the House

Imagine knowing that you were supposed to clean up the yard, and that you had always cleaned up the yard, and having someone forbid you to even go outside. Imagine if much of the pride you had was in how immaculate you kept that yard.


Don and Ella have a pristine yard. Carefully planned, thoroughly landscaped, and always as clean and neat as the inside of their house.

Except right now. A huge pile of yard debris and pine needles was driving Don crazy. Lunch was done, and he was ready to get his hat and coat on and go out to the yard and pick it all up. Ella held onto his chest and pleaded "Honey, you must not go." When that didn't work she got stern "Honey. You are NOT going out in the yard." Enter the nosy caregiver!
"Is there something I can do to help?" I asked, very cheerfully (and refraining from giving her a big old stink eye).
Don looked puzzled. I said "I can help you clean up that pile in the yard that's bothering you!"
"You would????" he smiled.
She didn't look really pleased. I felt a lot like Cinderella. After all, my chores were done, except for the ironing. The ironing of the sweat clothes, and jeans. I pushed the ironing board up against the wall, unplugged and stored the hot iron, and got on my sweater.
"Let's go outside!"

The man of the house struggled into his shoes, and got his coat and hat, and out the door we went. He stopped and looked at me. "You.... you do this stuff?"
"I do whatever is needed. Yes."
"Well, okayyyy...." (sing song voice)

We raked, shoveled, and gathered as much debris as we could into the yard recycle bin. We filled it to the absolute top. He looked concerned. I just smiled.

Dementia is so interesting. Some muscle memory and routines are undisturbed for some people, and then other things leave gaps. He could not figure out how we were going to get the recycle bin up to the street. I said "Let me turn this around. Then you'll grab one side, and I'll grab the other, and we will work together."
And work together we did. He was so surprised that we could get that all the way up to the walk beside the garage. "I'll take it from here!" he said so happily. It was obvious that the work, the air, and the sense of accomplishment had done him good. We put bin out by the other two, and slowly walked back to the back door. "I think I'll go get my saw and cut up those large branches out there" he said.
Emmmmm no.
"Hey," I said. "I'll make you a deal! Let's do the sawing tomorrow, and take a walk today."
There were some small snowflakes swirling around by this time.
"Okayyyy. Do you think we should walk in this snow?"
"I think it will be fun!"
"Okay, then. Let's do that."

I'll tell you about our walk tomorrow.