(written newly for this version of my website)
About Linda now (2024).
On 5 October 2020, I found Linda lying on the floor of our bathroom, unable to speak and unable to get up. I called the paramedics, and they took her to the emergency room. They and the hospital probably saved her life.
Her gall bladder had failed suddenly and catastrophically. It damaged other organs as it failed, including her brain. It was months before she could talk again, and then she had no memory. Well, I guess that's not true. She had scraps and shards of memories for the last few months, seeing and hearing people and being unable to communicate.
She knows facts like elementary school kids learn history. She knows she's seventy-four but only has memories of Skilled Nursing Facility rooms and wheelchairs for three years or so. She knows her name is Linda and mine is Wyatt. She knows I am her husband and we have been married forty years, but has no idea what marriage means and forty years are just words.
I say she as if the same Linda that lay down in the bathroom is still there. That is not my understanding. Her body and her brain persist. The brain has rewired itself and created a new being. I believe there is a new being there, but we still call her Linda.
I am no authority on such matters. I just live with what is happening and have my thoughts about it.
Linda now lives in a Skilled Nursing Facility and I live in a Senior Living Facility. We talk by telephone daily.
I invite you to visit earlier appreciations of Lindy. (See menu.)