Books |
A Three Dog Life
Abigail Thomas
By
Published: Apr 08, 2009
Category:
Memoir
Does she have a husband?
Well, Rich is around, a phone call or a visit away. He can speak. He can even make sense: “If I wasn’t with you and we weren’t getting food, the dark would envelop my soul.”
On the other hand, Rich is gone. Forever. His dog shook off his leash and ran into the street. Rich followed — and was hit by a car. Now the circuits in his brain are scrambled, and all the town’s doctors can’t put him together again.
“Psychosis, paranoia, hallucinations, aggressive behavior, rages” — Abigail Thomas, Rich’s wife, knows all the ways Rich’s behavior makes him an impossible companion. Consider:
He became, for all intents and purposes, a madman. The food was poisoned, the apartment wasn’t ours, it was a replica, why was I trying to fool him? He stood among bloody bodies, unarmed in battle, desperate and terrified. The Gestapo was coming for him. He was also gentle and sweet for stretches of time, but madness held sway.
How do you handle someone like that?
In the beginning, a home health aide was there 24 hours a day, and together we tried to get Rich to his doctors’ appointments, his outpatient rehab, into clean clothes, into his shoes, out for a walk in the park. Simple tasks were uphill sledding. What would take an ordinary person five minutes took Rich hours, and we learned to start preparing him long ahead of time, but he fell into rages and we often got nowhere. There were three shifts, and everybody went home after eight hours except me and Rich. We were home.
Five weeks later, Rich was admitted to the psychiatric ward of another hospital, and from there to a rehab facility on Long Island. But he did not improve, and after 10 months they couldn’t keep him any longer. This wasn’t a locked facility; he had gone out of the building several times and had headed up the hill toward a six-lane highway. They locked the elevator, an inconvenience for everybody, but then Rich found the stairs. They were sorry, but he wasn’t improving, they couldn’t keep him safe, and they needed the bed.
I remember sitting in the little office with the head of the program. I liked her very much. We had grown to know each other well over the past year. “What options do we have?” I asked.
She looked uncomfortable. I could look for a nursing home with a locked unit, she said, although she knew of no place offhand, or I could take him home.
Take him home?
No. No way. Abigail finds a facility for her husband. And then she bravely sets out to create a new life for herself.
Stephen King called A Three Dog Life “the best memoir I have ever read.” Her situation isn’t one I can imagine or identify with; for me, her book didn’t inspire the ultimate superlative. What held me was Abigail Thomas, the writer.
There is a way of writing with such great clarity and simplicity that even the smart reader misses the self-pity. That’s not Abigail Thomas. When she writes, “He never knows I’m leaving until I go,” she means exactly what she says, and nothing more. The result is a book that could profitably occupy an entire semester of a writing class.
But that’s not the real reason to read “A Three Dog Life”. This is one of those “what if” memoirs — a book that makes you wonder what you’d do if you were in the author’s situation. I doubt you’d do better. I’m sure I couldn’t. For Abigail Thomas carried on. She made a new life for herself without completely abandoning her old one. And when, in the last paragraph, she tells you what she learned, you will believe. And be glad.
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