Patty Wait (née Williams)

“What I need to know is what we are doing,” I said to Patty Wait yesterday as we breakfasted in a restaurant.
Both Patty and I are Class of ’66 at Houghton College (“HO-tin;” as in “hoe,” not “how” or “who”), about 75-80 miles south of Rochester.
Patty only did two years; pre-nursing perhaps. I did the entire four years, first in my family to earn a college degree.
As I recall, both Patty and I worked in the college kitchen. Patty is very sociable, as opposed to me. So we struck up a friendship.
At that time she was “Patty Williams;” she married a non-Houghton guy named “Dave Wait.”
“Perhaps it’s because I lost the best friend I ever had, and you might lose the best friend you ever had,” I said.
“I’ve lost him already,” Patty said.
Patty’s husband Dave has some sort of degenerative brain disease, or diseases, akin to Alzheimer’s, or including Alzheimer’s, that has reduced him to “a toddler in an adult body,” as Patty describes it.
He also has aphasia, and can hardly talk at all. I have aphasia too, resultant from my stroke, but only slight. In my case it’s difficulty assembling words for speech, not writing.
So I don’t like making phonecalls or conversing. I usually get by, but can lock up. Stony silences, etc.
“Wassa matter? Cat got your tongue?”
Patty suggested she was developing aphasia herself. She was forgetting words.
I don’t think so. To me that’s senility; I have that too.
Aphasia is different. I’m speaking with an area of my brain that wasn’t designed for speech — or so it seems. I’m speaking from what remained after my stroke.
She noted Dave seems to have forgotten their daughter.
“Does he know who you are?” I asked.
“Yes. I’m his savior.”
So there’s Patty with a thin approximation of the guy she married, a fate similar to losing my wife.
So I’m supposed to help her, and will, of course.
Fate has dealt us similar hands. I’ve lost the best friend I ever had, and Patty is losing the best friend she ever had.
We’ll talk about it. She’ll have a shoulder to lean on.
Please don’t pass judgment on me, Patty. I’m not a believer.
I don’t think she will.
My best friend wasn’t a believer either.
Although I don’t think she knew who she was, so was modeling herself after me.
Her mother made her a nobody.

• “Houghton College,” in western New York, is where I went to college, and from where I graduated with a BA in 1966. I’ve never regretted it, although I graduated a Ne’er-do-Well, without their blessing. Houghton is an evangelical liberal-arts college.
• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I miss her immensely. Best friend I ever had, and after my childhood I sure needed one. —She was also Houghton Class of ’66.
• I had a stroke October 26th, 1993, from which I pretty much recovered. Just tiny detriments; I can pass for never having had a stroke. It slightly compromised my speech. (Difficulty finding and putting words together.)