It’s a cool, rainy morning in Knoxville. Both the neighborhood and the house are very quiet except for some soft piano music playing in the background. I had planned for us to visit our friend Ellen in Nashville today. The weather report changed my mind. It is supposed to rain a good bit and might snow as well. Either way, I’d rather not be on the highway.
I trust that Kate and I will have another good day. We usually do. That was true yesterday. Kate was up surprisingly early (before 9:00). She had gotten up to go to the bathroom and went back to bed. I checked on her at 10:00. She wasn’t asleep but very relaxed and didn’t want to get up.
When I went back about about 10:20, she asked me what she should do. I suggested getting up and taking a shower. She said she didn’t want to take a shower. After she had been to the bathroom, she changed her mind. This was another day she wanted my help to the bathroom, toilet, and shower.
One thing was different yesterday. She knew me as her husband. She may have asked my name one or two times, but she knew we are married and mentioned things during the day that made that clear.
We were able to leave for lunch by 11:30. That made it easy to return home for the sitter at 1:00. Before she arrived, I pulled up a series of YouTube videos with Christmas music. The first one I previewed was Handel’s Messiah. I told her that was a special piece of music for us because we attended a performance of Messiah on our first date in 1961. I have mentioned this a number of times during this Christmas season, so I was surprised to see that she responded emotionally. Her eyes immediately filled with tears.
I left Kate and the sitter with the videos running. When I returned four hours later, they were still watching. Kate said, “You should have been here for the beautiful music.” Mary said that Kate had rested part of the time and may have actually fallen asleep for a little while. She couldn’t be sure.
We relaxed at home for another thirty minutes before going out for our Friday night pizza. We came back home where I watched the evening news while Kate worked on her iPad. Following the news, we watched a portion of Messiah broadcast by the BBC. It was a good way to end the day.
