The Notebook (The Notebook #1)(38)

“I’m so sorry to have to tell you this,” Dr. Barnwell began, “but you seem to be in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. . . .”

My mind went blank, and all I could think about was the light that glowed above our heads. The words echoed in my head: the early stages of Alzheimer’s . . .

My world spun in circles, and I felt her grip tighten on my arm. She whispered, almost to herself: “Oh, Noah . . . Noah . . .”

And as the tears started to fall, the word came back to me again: . . . Alzheimer’s ...

It is a barren disease, as empty and lifeless as a desert. It is a thief of hearts and souls and memories. I did not know what to say to her as she sobbed on my bosom, so I simply held her and rocked her back and forth.

The doctor was grim. He was a good man, and this was hard for him. He was younger than my youngest, and I felt my age in his presence. My mind was confused, my love was shaking, and the only thing I could think was:

No drowning man can know which drop of water his last breath did stop; . . .

A wise poet’s words, yet they brought me no comfort. I don’t know what they meant or why I thought of them.

We rocked to and fro, and Allie, my dream, my timeless beauty, told me she was sorry. I knew there was nothing to forgive, and I whispered in her ear. “Everything will be fine,” I whispered, but inside I was afraid. I was a hollow man with nothing to offer, empty as a junked stovepipe.

I remember only bits and pieces of Dr. Barnwell’s continuing explanation.

“It’s a degenerative brain disorder affecting memory and personality . . . there is no cure or therapy. . . .

There’s no way to tell how fast it will progress . . . it differs from person to person. ...I wish I knew more. . . .

Some days will be better than others. ...It will grow worse with the passage of time. . . . I’m sorry to be the one who has to tell you. . . .”

I’m sorry . . .

I’m sorry . . .

I’m sorry . . .

Everyone was sorry. My children were broken-hearted, my friends were scared for themselves. I don’t remember leaving the doctor’s office, and I don’t remember driving home. My memories of that day are gone, and in this my wife and I are the same.

It has been four years now. Since then we have made the best of it, if that is possible. Allie organized, as was her disposition. She made arrangements to leave the house and move here. She rewrote her will and sealed it. She left specific burial instructions, and they sit in my desk, in the bottom drawer. I have not seen them. And when she was finished, she began to write. Letters to friends and children. Letters to brothers and sisters and cousins. Letters to nieces, nephews, and neighbors. And a letter to me.

I read it sometimes when I am in the mood, and when I do, I am reminded of Allie on cold winter evenings, seated by a roaring fire with a glass of wine at her side, reading the letters I had written to her over the years. She kept them, these letters, and now I keep them, for she made me promise to do so. She said I would know what to do with them. She was right; I find I enjoy reading bits and pieces of them just as she used to. They intrigue me, these letters, for when I sift through them I realize that romance and passion are possible at any age. I see Allie now and know I’ve never loved her more, but as I read the letters, I come to understand that I have always felt the same way.

I read them last three evenings ago, long after I should have been asleep. It was almost two o’clock when I went to the desk and found the stack of letters, thick and tall and weathered. I untied the ribbon, itself almost half a century old, and found the letters her mother had hidden so long ago and those from afterward. A lifetime of letters, letters professing my love, letters from my heart. I glanced through them with a smile on my face, picking and choosing, and finally opened a letter from our first anniversary.

I read an excerpt:

When I see you now—moving slowly with new life growing inside you—I hope you know how much you mean to me, and how special this year has been. No man is more blessed than me, and I love you with all my heart.

I put it aside, sifted through the stack, and found another, this from a cold evening thirty-nine years ago.

Sitting next to you, while our youngest daughter sang off-key in the school Christmas show, I looked at you and saw a pride that comes only to those who feel deeply in their hearts, and I knew that no man could be more lucky than me.

And after our son died, the one who resembled his mother . . . It was the hardest time we ever went through, and the words still ring true today:

In times of grief and sorrow I will hold you and rock you, and take your grief and make it my own. When you cry, I cry, and when you hurt, I hurt. And together we will try to hold back the floods of tears and despair and make it through the potholed streets of life.

I pause for just a moment, remembering him. He was four years old at the time, just a baby. I have lived twenty times as long as he, but if asked, I would have traded my life for his. It is a terrible thing to outlive your child, a tragedy I wish upon no one.

I do my best to keep the tears away, sift through some more to clear my mind, and find the next from our twentieth anniversary, something much easier to think about:

When I see you, my darling, in the morning before showers or in your studio covered with paint with hair matted and tired eyes, I know that you are the most beautiful woman in the world.

They went on, this correspondence of life and love, and I read dozens more, some painful, most heartwarming. By three o’clock I was tired, but I had reached the bottom of the stack. There was one letter remaining, the last one I wrote her, and by then I knew I had to keep going.