When you want to get attention from your students, when nobody in your class is listening to you, just lower your voice to a whisper. Look someone right in the eye and begin whispering. It’s your lecture, but now you’re whispering it to someone and suddenly everyone wants to hear what you are saying. As if it is a secret you are only sharing with the one you are making eye contact. Ha ha. Good trick. It only works once or twice with the same raucous crowd though.

I guess most people try to hear others when they are whispering. Whisperers make funny faces when they are trying to be heard only to a choice one or two. They exaggerate their silent words making their mouths look peculiar. Their eyes get big and the animation is amusing. But it’s the whispering that gets the attention first.

Mom and I were whispering to each other in front of Steve, my stepfather, her husband of 30 years. He had Alzheimer’s and we thought he was sleeping. His hospital bed was next to Mom’s normal one. We were able to keep him at home, with visits from the hospice team, and all the meds he needed to be administered by us or the nurse who came regularly. Anyway, we thought he was sleeping. Suddenly he shouted, “What are you two whispering about?” The tone of his voice sounded angry. Actually I don’t even remember what we were whispering about; that’s not the point. We were only trying not to wake him.

It was one of those moments when we were brought down to our foundations regarding the strangeness and the inconsistencies of that horrible condition named after the scientist, Alzheimer. Just as suddenly as my stepdad boomed his question, he was lost in a world we weren’t a part of, never hearing our response, or possibly forgetting he’d even asked the question. Alzheimer’s is a sad and strange way to go. All Mom and I could do was look at each other for relief; just one of the many times we sought solace in each other’s eyes.

But by this time, Steve didn’t even know who we were most of the time. Well, that isn’t altogether true. Sometimes he would call me by name, or something close to my name, but he always remembered who Mom was. He called her “his sweetie.” He would look over at her and smile and say, “Hi Sweetie.” To the end we felt he knew who his sweetie was. They were together when he passed.

It’s such an old tradition to lay the deceased body out for viewing. I don’t know anyone who professes to like this tradition, but it somehow carries on. As people gathered into the “viewing” room, I watched them looking uncomfortable as they timidly went to the casket. Or maybe it was my own feeling of unease that I projected onto their demeanors.

I made my own way over eventually ready to say goodbye and I stood staring at the ghost of Steve who was in the casket. We had him in his favorite red shirt and his turquoise tie he loved so much (see picture), and because he always carried his glasses in a case in his front shirt pocket, we tucked them in as well. It’s obvious that the “real” Stevie wasn’t there, but I repeated the farewell I’d given him when he was sleeping in his hospital bed in his own bedroom two months before: “Thank you for loving and caring for my mother, for being a wonderful stepdad, and such a loving and fun grandfather to my boys.” Touching his arm, I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, leaned in and whispered, “I love you, Stevie, and I’ll miss you.”

Stevie and me, a very long time ago…