One Hundred Names for Love: A Memoir by Diane Ackerman Read Free Book Online Page B

liquid. For Paul, clear water only if thickened to sludge. No milk, his favorite drink. No refreshment from a sparkling fizzy sip of Dr. Brown’s Diet Cream Soda. Nothing thin enough to quench a thirst.
    You’d think choking would have stood out as the scariest assessment, but what shattered me was the note: “No functional verbal communication.” The stroke had done far more than damage his ability to read, write, or talk—his brain no longer wanted to process language at all. Yet I hoped to take him home sometime soon.
    What on earth will going home be like? The thought pinwheeled through my head. Sad ghosts? A shrivel of silence in his study? Not even the clacking of typewriter keys? Or will I hear a plaintive stream of “mem, mem, mem”? How will I be able to look after him at home? I’d grown used to our household of two adults. What would life be like having him at home and handicapped, in need of supervision, unable to communicate his desires in words, and full of tantrums as a result?
    Kelly and I left Paul to rest and we sat on chairs in the hallway to confer. She recommended further swallowing studies to monitor for signs of improvement, and also speech therapy five days a week.
    “In terms of language,” I asked tentatively, “what do you think?”
    She paused a moment to frame her thoughts, as fluorescent light showered down on us like silently accumulating snowfall.
    “Long-term, I hope he’ll be able to communicate his basic wants and needs,” she said slowly, allowing time for the words to sink in, “verbally or in gestures or maybe using a communication board, with about 80 percent accuracy.”
    Basic wants and needs , I heard her say. Basic wants and needs . The phrase spun in my mind. As if that could ever be enough for normal people, let alone word-besotted creatures like us. Life lives in nuances and innuendos. How could Paul’s immense cosmos of words shrink to the size of a communication board overnight? How could ours?
    “Short-term,” she continued with maddening practicality, “we’ll be striving for about 50 percent accuracy in naming common objects. I’d like him to be able to choose between two items, when you name them, about 80 percent of the time, and follow simple commands with 80 percent accuracy.”
    Would you like the “pants” or the “shorts,” the “pillow” or the “blanket”? That would be life from now on? My thoughts spiraled, and I felt not just psychic pain, but a specific ache I could locate in several muscles between my ribs. Global aphasia. Woundingly right. Our couple, DianeandPaul , had been a ghostly continent of two countries. What would become of it? Would a boundary of silence fall between us? No more Paul touching voices by telephone many times a day when I traveled? No more Paul calling to me across the hallway, “Poet, what’s a word for . . . ?” No more Paul tucking me in at night and leaving refrigerator notes in the morning? No more confiding, whispering intimacies, playing with words, sharing the world? It’s beastly , I thought, completely unthinkable . And if he couldn’t read or work, what would he do all day? Probably want me to keep him company—and that was understandable—though devastating to my work, my freedom. I would need to be able to write for my own joy and sanity, but also now to support the household and help pay for Paul’s care. Still, I felt deeply ashamed to be indulging in such self-centered worries.
    When Kelly left, I went to a windowed alcove just beyond the Rehab Unit doors and wept. Out of shame that I couldn’t fix things, and out of grief. I’d never before had to mourn for someone who was still alive. I mourned for Paul, and I also mourned for myself, and for the loss of the word-drenched companionship we’d created, due to a tiny land mine traveling through his blood vessels. Beneath our civilized hair and hide, and beneath awareness even, we easily destroy ourselves. To be so godlike, and yet so