80%

28th January 2013

This little bear sits on my desk just by the computer. He is very old. My mother gave him to my father for his 21st birthday. She must have tied the red ribbon round his neck. I have put him in the protective arms of a Barbary Ape that my husband bought me in France on my 60th birthday when we were in Rocamadour. They look happy and safe like that together. 

The lovely man at Innovations In Dementia  has asked my husband to write a piece for their newsletter, about what it’s like living with his diagnosis, which he has done. We are sitting at the table after lunch with copies of his article in front of us. I have a pen in my hand as he’s asked me to read it and make corrections.

One sentence is - 

....I wrote a number of plays but none of them got acted.

 I automatically cross out got acted and put in were performed.

Then I stop. Because that’s the whole point. He doesn’t write like that any more. He uses words he knows - which say it perfectly. And which tell his story a thousand times better than if I try and tidy it up with the ‘correct’ past tense.....

But he does agree to put an ‘e’ on the end of breath to make it a verb.

If you say so, he says. But his voice doesn’t believe me.

They say something like 80% of communication isn’t in the words you use anyway.