Lawrence Raab's "A Friend's Umbrella"

 A Friend’s Umbrella by Lawrence Raab Ralph Waldo Emerson, toward the end of his life, found the names of familiar objects escaping him. He wanted to say something about a window, or a table, or a book on a table. But the word wasn't there, although other words could still suggest the shape of what he meant. Then someone, his wife perhaps, would understand: "Yes, window! I'm sorry, is there a draft?" He'd nod. She'd rise. Once a friend dropped by to visit, shook out his umbrella in the hall, remarked upon the rain. Later the word umbrella vanished and became the thing that strangers take away. Paper, pen, table, book: was it possible for a man to think without them? To know that he was thinking? We remember that we forget, he'd written once, before he started to forget. Three times he was told that Longfellow had died. Without the past, the present lay around him like the sea. Or like a ship, becalmed, upon the sea. He smiled to think he was the captain then, gazing off into whiteness, waiting for the wind to rise. From The History of Forgetting. © 2009 Lawrence Raab published by Penguin Poets .  I'd met Uncle George only once or twice before. A quiet, modest man, he struck me as about perfectly outfitted to be a good high school guidance counselor, which is how he'd spent all his working days. After the Second World War, he'd headed out to Nebraska, married, then left with his bride for sunny California. I'd anticipated our visit. I remembered him as someone with whom I could hold a conversation without either getting in trouble for sounding off or dying inside for keeping the vitriol in. Uncle George abided in safe territory. But there were no politics that morning because there was no talk at all. Tall and thin as always, he stood beside his wife like a unlikely lap dog, paid attention, it seemed, only to her. His smile was not occasioned by either me or his niece from Arizona, but it was there just about all the time. He was entirely at home with our being there, whoever we were. He smiled frequently, more widely when some passing fancy animated his consciousness. He was a victim of Alzheimer's, the first such victim I'd ever been around; and it was eerie, scary even because he was not who he'd been. He'd not been the kind of person who has to be at the very heart of things, or a man whose sheer presence fills the room. But neither had ever been the puppy he'd become, like a child waiting for his wife to tell him to get into the car or to come out again. What was obvious was that some routine functioning simply wasn't. Lawrence Robb's "A Friend's Umbrella" is a portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the 19th century's most famous philosopher/poet/abolitionist, at a time when he was no longer capable of arriving anywhere near to what he once was. His forgetfulness slowly but surely took aim on the entirety of his consciousness, and he forgets just about everything he isn't considering in what's left of his psyche.  There's this at least. What I remember most of Uncle George on that last visit is what appeared to be his peace of mind. He showed no discomfort whatsoever with having to be instructed into just about every move. If he was no longer captain of his own ship, he was at least comfortable standing on the deck and taking note of the lovely waters all around "gazing off into the whiteness, waiting for the wind to rise." I've been an Emerson loyalist for all of my professional life. Somehow, to think of him that way, at that time, like Uncle George, offers some relief.