A story

I've held off on telling this story, but I don't think I can keep standing in its way...

May did things in sevens. Seven years of her corporate career. Seven years of the two of us doing everything together. Seven years striking out on her own into the world of Peruvian shamanism and Native American ceremonial life. Seven years as an apprentice in the art of Black Hat Feng Shui. And now, seven years of Alzheimer's.

During the shamanism/Native American years, we made several trips to Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Taos to buy original art. When we moved to Evanston, she began the task of re-hanging all the art but only got a few things up before succumbing to the early stages of her condition. So in several rooms, still, there are framed objects leaning against walls where they were to have been hung.

In the small room off our bedroom, behind a portable clothes rack, on the floor leaning against a short wall, there was a large papier-mâché casting of an Indian medicine woman holding a tobacco pouch. The casting is inside a thick plastic box mounted on a heavy wooden base. In front of it, leaning against the medicine women, was a watercolor of an Indian offering his ceremonial pipe to a night sky.

When I got home Monday evening, I noticed that the door to the small room was closed and I went to open it, but there was some kind of obstruction. I peaked around the corner and saw winter coats on the floor. I pushed harder, and found the clothes rack on its side and partly dismantled. I looked behind the clothes rack and found the Indian with the pipe and the medicine woman no longer leaning against the wall. The medicine woman had set forth the chain reaction. Somehow she had pitched herself forward.

All this had happened while I was with May -- when she was seeing something over my right shoulder and trying desperately to tell me about it.

We bought this house in 2005 -- the medicine woman was in her seventh year leaning against that wall. This is the seventh home she has shared with us.