My Husband/My Father by David J. Lawless

A Fading Mind

"Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies." - Aristotle
The erasing of the word "memory" represents the fading memories of people with dementia. Eventually, memories start to disappear and everything becomes clouded. However, the effects of dementia do not interfere with love.
Source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/the-power-of-the-memory-molecule_1.jpg

My Husband/My Father is an acutely personal story about the daily life of an elderly couple with a wife who is suffering from dementia. On a daily basis, the wife has to take a plethora of pills in order to regulate her blood flow and wear a nitro patch to regulate her heartbeat. On top of her medical issues, the wife asks a breadth of questions regarding the whereabouts of her parents and siblings, burdening her husband with more difficulties. When her enigmatic, anachronous memories take her over, she believes that she is in Madrid, is not married and does not have kids, and that her parents are still alive. At one point, the wife even called the police to report an intruder, who in fact was her husband. She could not recognize him. Surprisingly, after all these inconvenient events, the husband lovingly stays with his wife, answers her repetitive questions, and pacifies her when she experiences trauma. This skillfully constructed anecdote, written in third person to allow the reader to understand both the husband and wife’s situation, makes for one of the most awe-inspiring expressions of marital love ever written about. David Lawless aptly combines his experiences living with his wife with an abundance dialogue to show his readers the support he, as the husband, gives to his wife through her difficulties. Nowadays, divorce has become extremely common and Lawless is not an advocate of divorce. By presenting an anecdote of a 50 yearlong marriage, Lawless sends a message to his married readers to never apply for divorce. Additionally, Lawless does an amazing job incorporating pathos and making the reader empathize with the husband through dialogue. This boosts the reader’s understanding of the husband, amplifying Lawless’ purpose to the reader. David Lawless successfully accomplished in conveying his message through the experiences that the husband faced in the anecdote, making it lucid that divorce and separation are never routes for him to take. Lawless ascribed this couple as the perfect pair glued together by love, and doing so allowed Lawless to achieve his purpose.