Time to Let Go Read Online Free

had warned him never to leave Biddy alone in the bathroom or the kitchen. Henrik should be here, now, to see how well everything still went. Biddy had even put her dirty clothes into the laundry basket and was now hanging her towel in the right spot to dry. She had not recognised the family home earlier but she was mechanically following a kind of morning routine. Walter watched her as she put on the clothes he had put out for her the evening before and the slightly irritated mood he had been in earlier disappeared completely.
    “Well done, Biddy!” he said apprecia tively. “You are a star today!”
    Biddy came out of the bathroom, eager and energetic, and without help found her way downstairs, whistling a Cliff Richard song.
    “You are in a good mood!” Walter said cheerfully.
    “Yes. I am. I can’t wait to see the town,” she told him.
    Sometimes her attention span could be shorter than that of a goldfish but at other times, like now, she could hold on to the same thought for much longer and almost become obsessed with it. The inconsistency in her memory loss was hard for him to bear: he felt more comfortable with clear and constant parameters in his life.
    Before Biddy had been diagnosed he had read the odd article about the disease in the papers and he knew, vaguely, that there were progressive stages. He guessed there was no denying that his wife had passed the initial stage and was probably somewhere in the early middle or moderate stage of the disease, but he preferred not to know anything else about it.
    It was cruel that there were days when he could be tempted to believe that her fading memory was on the mend, almost promising a complete recovery; then, unpredictably, the disease would take that hope and present him with a shadow of his wife who could be a complete stranger, a child or a lunatic. It was as the doctor had said: “Every patient is different.” So why burden oneself with doom and gloom?
    “Do you feel like cycling or do you want us to take the car?”
    “I would love to cycle. How far did you say it is?” she asked.
    “No more than twenty minutes, ” Walter answered.
    “Ok then.”
    The two of them put on their shoes and bicycle helmets and took to the road. Their house was on a quiet residential cul-de-sac with both speed bumps and a lowered speed limit because of a playground at the end of the road. A footpath next to it led to the canal from where one could easily get into town.
    Biddy and Walter had been passionate about sport all of their lives, which was the reason why he tried to get her to do as much exercise as she was willing to take part in. This was another constant part of her life that he wa nted to keep up for as long as possible. The speed and the dangerous behaviour of younger and more aggressive cyclists on the path was a bit of a worry but it was the lesser evil for Biddy, compared to a further loss of mental and emotional stability that the abandonment of cycling and her active lifestyle could bring.
    Their trip took them past the local cemetery, a place where Biddy once used to spend a lot of her time, visiting the grave of her mother and her sister, lighting candles and replacing old flowers with fresh ones. Walter tried not to take her there. On a bad day she could go through the same heart-rendering routine and cry and relive the pain of losing the two women again, but if she suggested making a stop he always obliged her, cherishing her initiative and hoping that any connection to the past and her life before the illness was a good thing, even if the occasion was a sad one.
    Today Biddy seemed too involved with observing the wildlife on the canal t o notice the cemetery and they arrived in the town centre in almost record time. As had been her habit before the disease, Biddy went straight to the fruit market stand and looked at the prices.
    “Two pounds?” she said, lifting a basket of grapes and pretending to be gasping for air. “No! That should be twenty