As time passed, Bill moved on from his health fears.  He pushed them to the back of his mind, I suppose, as he realised that no one could help him and that his problem with reading was probably inevitable.  After all, we had studied Angela Berens’ book, The Aphasia Guide, and we knew that people with aphasia often found it hard to  “understand words, speak, read, spell, write and use numbers” ( p.12).  I think, though, that we had hoped that we would stave off much of the decline with our earnest and enthusiastic participation in ongoing speech therapy sessions and our continuing efforts to involve ourselves in our usual social activities.  It was disappointing, then, that in spite of all our hard work, the brain losses continued to occur.

In this year of 2008, the decline was evident, not only in reading, but in all other areas of literacy and numeracy.  Reading was no longer automatic and Bill had to concentrate really hard to get meaning out of the words.  Often, passages had to be re-read and, eventually, he gave up reading anything complex or wordy and confined himself to flipping through magazines that contained plenty of pictures e.g., Caravan World or National Geographic.

It was when we took our trip out to Camooweal that we discovered that Bill had trouble with more than reading.  We found, in fact, that Bill could no longer interpret a map.  The process of “reading” the map and translating it to reality now escaped him, as did the ability to discern left from right.

Such problems, too, did not stop at maps.  When we were getting ready to go to Europe, I found, with dismay, that Bill had lost the ability to measure length.  We had to measure our suitcases to ensure that they were not oversized and Bill could not do it.  This man, who was a carpenter by trade and had, from the time he was sixteen, used a measuring tape every day of his life, did not know how to clip the tape on to one end of the case and pull it along to the other in order to read the length.

Bill could not measure and, as well, he was having trouble with money.  Though, for the past twenty years, he had been treasurer for various clubs, he now no longer knew the value of notes or coins and could not count them or add them.  As was our custom, we tried to overcome the problem by practising.  We took our hoard of coins that we had been saving for a rainy day and we practised.  We practised equivalence.

“What silver coins could we take to make up fifty cents?” I asked.

“How many fifty cent pieces would you need to make up two dollars?”

We practised giving change, practised counting by fives, tens and twenties, practised buying three apples at ten cents each, and so on and so on. In the end, however, just as it was with reading, we had to face up to the fact that Bill could no longer handle money in the way that he used to.

Amazingly, through all this loss, Bill always remained brave and resourceful.  He still managed, for example, to go shopping, overcoming his money problems by taking with him, to the hardware store, or the lighting place, or to Rotary, a huge wad of money.  He would hand the whole wad over to the “shopkeeper” and would trust that the shopkeeper would give him back the correct change. And he always did. People were always so good to Bill.