It promises to be perfect weather for a road trip. Early fall; a drive from Spokane, Washington to Butte, Montana. Big sky, blue skies as we climb up the mountain passes of northern Idaho, then down onto Montana’s high plains. My sister and I have been in the rental car for three hours, our only detour so far a kitschy Western gift shop featuring slot machines, art painted on tree stumps, an alarming number of saber-like knives, and a giant wooden Indian.
“I love,” she says, eyeing the gorgeous view out the window. “Tell me your name.”
I turn slightly toward her so she can watch me form the word she so desperately wants to remember. I open my mouth, emphasizing the vibration in my throat and make the “Ka” sound, then place my tongue between my front teeth and draw the syllable out, “thy.” “Kathy.” I repeat my name a few more times, like this is a perfectly normal thing we are doing.
“Ka-thy, Ka-thy, Kathy,” she says, after a few false starts, like she has just solved a difficult algebraic equation.
“Yes,” I crow, “That’s great!” I wait a minute, then sounding even to myself like a kindergarten teacher, ask her again. “What’s my name?”
Silence. “Calm,” she says, as she fans herself with her hand like she has become overheated. “Calm” is what she says when she gets upset because the words aren’t there.
My sister, at fifty-five, is thirteen months younger than I am. (I’m the oldest; she is second oldest of six girls in our family.) Four months before our road trip she fell down a flight of concrete stairs and landed on her head at the bottom, fracturing her skull. Not even sure she would live; her surgeon had performed surgery to reduce pressure in her injured brain. This was the left side of her brain, where speech and memory reside. I live near Philadelphia, but when I got the news I made plans to fly to Spokane to see her in the ICU. She was there for three weeks, then moved to rehab for a few weeks, and then was released to the care of her boyfriend. I flew out a second time to help with that transition. Now I am here to help her move her things out of her house in Butte. She has to sell the house and spend an unknown stretch of time in the care of others recovering from her injury.
