the eyes

Before both the tumors were diagnosed in 2005 and 2006, I noticed Maries eyes changed. I don't mean the color. I mean the life in them. The left eye would droop. And the black in each eye would become smaller. It was a blank look. They did not have the intensity of thought. The inquisitiveness and the knowledge of human life. Rather, a lifeless stare of existing, but not understanding. I could see the disease in her eyes. This phenomenon was there for the first tumor, but I didn't recognize it then.

Back in 2000 Marie began to drift off. We would eat dinner, and she would get up from the table, walk into the living room, and sit down. I would get upset with her, and ask her who she thought was going to clean up? Marie wouldn't respond.  I believed we were having an argument, but she was oblivious to the conversation. She was going off to "her world", but I didn't know it at the time.

The job she had in early 2000 was a supervisory position. One day Marie came home and told me that she was in trouble at work. She had been called onto the big bosses office and told that she needed to change her behavior. She was given a deadline to write a report on what things she was going to do differently. That deadline came and went. No report was written, and she was given a new, and final deadline, to adhere to. I questioned her over and over as to what had she done wrong. Again and again she told me that she had no idea what the bosses were talking about. Each day she would go into work, and they would ask her if she completed the task. It was always the same. Marie didn't know what they wanted. A report about what. It's not like she was proclaiming her innocence. She wasn't aware of the conversation.

Marie ended up emailing her boss, from home, that she wouldn't be returning to work. It's not, just, that she didn't know what they wanted, she didn't understand the words they were speaking. It was during this time that I first noticed the eyes. Also at this time Marie was having, what she described to me, as feinting spells in the shower. Or how she vomited. She would say that she must have eaten something bad. I believe now that she was having seizures. You would think that all these signs were obvious, but the weren't. These things were all explainable. Especially if you don't want to see a problem. Life was good at that time. People have their ups and downs. It certainly wasn't a ... brain tumor. Today I look at the eyes. I am constantly looking at the eyes.