Time to Let Go Read Online Free Page A

pence.”
    Walter calculated in his mind when said twenty pence would have been the actual price for grapes. He had found that lately his wife seemed mentally to regress to a certain time or age in her life when she had a better recollection than the confused present time. Depending on the day she could behave as young as a child, as she had done earlier, or a little older, if they were lucky. Maybe, as more and more of her recent memory vanished, she was coping by seeking refuge in an era that - on her personal time line - was safe and so protected from memory loss. Although the progress of this loss was not occurring in a strictly reverse chronological order, from the present towards her childhood, at times it was how one could perceive the development. In that regard, there again was no consistency, however hard he tried to create it. The younger she became in her mind the less he was dealing with an equal or a life partner any more.
    “Biddy don’t worry. I am going to buy grapes in the supermarket later. They are still cheap there. Would you like to feed the ducks now?” he suggested quickly.
    Whenever her world clash ed with the details of reality - like now over the price of grapes – she could become agitated and upset. In his eyes some of those clashes justified the risk of pain because he hoped that they might trigger something to bring her into the present time – at least for a moment - but fretting over the price of grapes wasn’t going to help.
    “Yes. Do we have bread?” she asked.
    “Yes, I brought some from the larder.”
    “Oh, you think of everything. ”
    For the next half hour he watched his wife as she was talking to and feeding the ducks in a pond in a nearby park. This was a very quiet time of day for the birds. School children were at class and mothers with young ones seemed to come out here a little later than this: the pond was all hers. It amazed him how much joy and entertainment his wife could gain from such a simple thing as feeding the ducks.
    Her zest for life still showed frequently and sometimes even seemed completely unbroken by the disease. When she was first diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease she had desperately tried to fight it and in the process she had suffered a lot. She had read all the books there were, taken supplements and tried to train her brain with exercises.
    “Come to bed,” Walter had said to her one evening when she had spent several hours in the study with her brain teasers.
    “But I must solve this puzzle,” Biddy shot back at him. “I can’t finish unless I get this right.”
    “ Do it tomorrow, love.”
    “No,” Biddy hissed. “I need to do it now.”
    “You are probably too tired to solve it tonight. You need sleep more than this exercise,” Walter tried again.
    “Mind your own business,” she yelled and slammed her fist on the table.
    Walter was so surprised at this uncharacteristic outburst he stood frozen and had no reply ready. While he struggled to come up with a response to this unprecedented shouting over nothing, Biddy doubled over on the desk and started to sob.
    “I can’t do it, Walter,” she cried. “I just can’t do it.”
    “You don’t need to do everything today. Do it tomorrow.”
    “That’s not just it, Walter. I’ve forgotten something else but I can’t remember what it is. I know it is something really important that I must do. I should have written it down.”
    Walter walked up to her and tried to hug her.
    “Get off me,” she screamed and yanked his hand away. “You don’t know what it is like. Don’t patronise me!”
    Walter wanted to shout back at her, to make her snap out of her mood, but he was just too surprised to think of what he could possibly say. His wife had never pushed him away before.
    He had left her in the study and went to bed. Biddy had stayed up for hours turning the house upside down for clues as to what she had forgotten. He did not sleep a wink that night and many more to follow when