Boodiful

“Oh that is boodiful,” he says stammering but fervently, on hearing certain music or touching colours and fabrics, or, once in awhile, touching my face.

Sometimes he stops in the middle of our time together, when he has been trusting me and responding, and asks, ” But who are you?”

And we have another moment of joy or grace.

I know his judgment when more able-minded, on seeing himself now would be that he should not be living this. “Take me out behind the barn and shoot me,”  he said when confronted with evidence of the devastation that this disease would bring.

But now, he is mostly happy, especially since now they let him lie in bed as long as he wants. When he does get up, mostly driven by hunger, sometimes coaxed by a caregiver (one does this trick of waving a banana under his nose!), he needs a good wash and a change of clothes, and then he is ready to eat and dance and explore a new world.

And appreciate the boodiful.