Lost in his own garage

In the beginning, Tommy could stay at home alone while Linda worked — although she sometimes returned to find the sandwich she’d made him for lunch in the cupboard next to the green beans.

But as the months marched on, he grew anxious, calling her at work several times a day, sometimes in a panic.

“Do you know where I am?” he’d ask. (“Look around and tell me what you see,” she’d say, before figuring out that he was lost — in his own garage.)Having left the room during his granddaughter's birthday party, Tommy Rhodes looks out a bathroom window. (Click image to enlarge)

Sometimes he’d call to ask: “Who are these people staring at me? Can you get them out of the house?”

At night, he followed her from room to room and told her repeatedly: “You know I love you, right?”

It was sad, scary and smothering all at once.

What’s more, Tommy seemed to not have the slightest notion that he was losing his mind.

At Wal-Mart, he glanced at himself in a mirror and asked, “Why is that man wearing my shirt?” At home, Linda had to remove or cover every mirror because he couldn’t stand the sight of his reflection.

It helped that she had spent most of her career in health care, paid to fix problems and answer questions before they ever reached the head honcho’s desk. In the administration office at Lewis-Gale, coworkers refer to the chair that sits in front of her desk as “the counseling chair” because many a doctor, staffer and patient have sat in it asking for Linda’s advice — and not just about work.

“She’s the ultimate take-charge, I’m-gonna-do-it-myself person,” colleague Kathy Cole says. Coworkers call her “the corporate Martha Stewart” — able to navigate a demanding job during the day and sew a flower-girl dress for her son’s wedding at night. (She also baked the cakes.)

Linda fixed the Wal-Mart problem by nixing it altogether, opting for Walgreens and other quick-stop stores instead.

It’s lesson No. 1 for caregivers who work full-time: Memorize the spots where you can pick up a gallon of milk and a bottle of shampoo at the same time.
Among the other lessons she learned in those early years:

There’s no figuring any of it out till it happens.

Speak reasonably to your husband’s hallucinatory visitors rather than tell him they don’t exist.

Laugh when you ask your husband for a kiss and he says, “Lord, no, my wife would kill me.”

And the toughest lesson of all: Sometimes the people closest to you will disappoint you the most.