Sleeping and Eating

Bo got up at noon today.

When I told him it was time to get dressed and come downstairs, that he had been in bed for 16 hours, he said, “So what?”

This ennui is frightening to me.  I wonder what is happening to him.

He ate lunch and mowed the grass (a very small yard) then returned to lie on the sofa, and when  I left at 3 to teach my class, he was still lying there.

When I arrived home at 6, his car was gone.  He had driven up to the golf course, about ½ a mile away,  to walk the perimeter and look for abandoned golf balls. He returned at 6:30,  looking very tired,  and said what he says every evening:  “You aren’t making anything fancy, are you?  I’m not very hungry.”

He loves corn on the cob,  so I got some again today.  I try to serve it often because he’ll eat more, go back for a second, sometimes even a third ear.  He ate his crabcake and a small serving of potato salad, then after helping to clean up, went back upstairs, to take a shower.  But when I checked, he was lying on the bed, petting Mikey cat. I try to have good desserts every day to tempt him, but he’ll miss his strawberry shortcake tonight, this man who loved desserts so much, ate large bowls of ice cream, three pieces of pie, loved cream puffs.

It’s 9 now and I just went up again.  This time I tried to talk with him about his sleeping and eating, but there was no conversation.  I had him step onto the scale to see that he only weighs 165 now, but he simply ignored what I said.  He lay down again, and when I asked him what he was thinking about, he said, “Nothing.”

So the lights are out and he’s asleep.  This is now a daily pattern:  sleep late,  get up,  do something, nap, eat, nap, do something, nap ……. He moves from the bed to the living room sofa to the family room sofa.  He tries to watch some news but doesn’t understand it.  He reads the paper – several times over, I believe, and doesn’t remember what he read. He loves our two cats and has been focusing on how old they are.  I tell him over and over that Charlie is 10 and Mikey’s 9,  and then he asks again.

And to make it all worse, I find myself not telling him things,  not discussing anything new because he will ask me the same question over and over and will not understand what I’m talking about. He’s forgetting more words, sometimes can’t figure out how to do things, and when he does start something, may forget to finish.  I watch him and see that everything is a struggle, just too much to do or be interested in.

This is no life for a man who has always been so vital and active.