LATHROP, Mo. - Dorothy, not long awake, her morning hair geometric, stands alone at the kitchen island. A jumble of plastic jars and amber medical vials is clustered in front of her like a miniature cityscape."Morning, sweetie," Barney says, walking in from the barn. "You're up earlier today." He hangs up his coat, moves to the dishwasher, begins putting plates away.Staring at her pills through round, oversized glasses, Dorothy barely looks up."Early?" she says. "I guess."She fidgets with her vials. Nasonex and Zyrtec for allergies. Wellbutrin for depression. Actonel, osteoporosis. Lipitor, cholesterol. ACTOS, diabetes. Exelon and vitamin E for Alzheimer's.This is the routine.Two years into a diagnosis of Alzheimer's, Dorothy no longer dwells on why her family has been so susceptible to the world's leading cause of dementia. Only 63, she has it now.As a young woman, she watched for nearly 15 years as her mother shriveled in mind and body and died of the disease at age 71. Two of Dorothy's sisters -- like her, round and barely 5 feet tall -- went much faster and younger, one just last February.Four and a half million Americans have Alzheimer's. No cure exists. No one knows the exact cause. But as America ages, few people will remain untouched by the disease.Barring any medical breakthroughs, the number of cases will double in the next 25 years. Every day people examine their "senior moments." They wonder. They worry.The first sign for Dorothy: She began forgetting items at the grocery store. She knew her family history. A doctor compared old and new head X-rays. Your brain is shrinking, he said.So together she and Barney talked to the doctors, traveled to leading experts in St. Louis, to a support group. There they learned more about what they would face: how the loveliness of their life together would be tested. How, in time, everything about Dorothy -- her sweet devotion, her everyday optimism -- would wither.Now the Gowins reach out for normalcy -- loving each other deeply, yet waltzing uneasily as they struggle toward one goal: to have good days, one at a time, knowing there will be fewer than they ever expected. Hoping today will be one of them.It is a crisp Sunday morning, nearly 8:30.Barney leans his face toward his wife's."Kiss?" he asks.She turns, gives him a perfunctory peck, turns away.A Kansas City homicide cop for 30 years -- easy, positive, scraggily bearded for his country retirement -- Barney already senses Dorothy's edginess."Have you had breakfast? Would you like coffee?" Barney asks.He has been thinking about the day. Soon they'll get ready for church in Lawson. They can have lunch in town. Maybe take in a movie. Make a nice day. Make Dorothy happy."I'll make some coffee," Barney says.Time was, not much more than a year before, when Dorothy would have greeted Barney's offer with a bright smile. Always, she was kind, giving, patient. "Mr. and Mrs. Congeniality," their children called them. Best friends.At the island now, Dorothy picks up a pen. Carefully she jots down her breakfast in the spiral journal she uses to keep track of her doses, meals and blood sugar for diabetes."I already ate," she mutters to Barney.She puts down her notebook amid scraps of paper, a pile of notes she began writing to Barney as the disease took hold. She wants desperately for Barney to read them, to act. To her misery, she believes he never will.You are the reason for all our problems as you are an abusive and self-centered brute.You aren't interested in finishing the house or in me.You don't love me and only want to control me.Every room of their country home is as cluttered as an attic with tools, toys, sewing stuff, boxes, photo albums.And hundreds of Dorothy's notes, collecting for more than a year, seething in heaps. They cover the kitchen counter, the kitchen table, the coffee table, the nightstands. They are tucked inside the pages of books, scribbled on scratch pads, envelopes, listed and numbered on typing paper.Dorothy's speech, once lucid, now comes out in fragments. She is only in the earliest, mild stages of the disease, but already simple words escape her. "Uhms" and "you knows" clog her sentences. Conversations ramble. She loses track, following vague thoughts aimlessly to some far off horizon where, her embarrassed eyes cast downward, her voice grows small and disappears.In her notes, however, her feelings are clear.Barney acts detestably. She feels alone. She feels isolated. Because, in her mind, Barney...Has given up! (Slip of paper in the kitchen.)Killed our marriage (Paper in the bedroom.)Treats me like I'm dumb. (Living room.)Takes great pleasure in making sure I never have a nice day -- one without him starting something so it goes bad.Barney pours himself a bowl of cereal and crosses behind Dorothy at the island."Is the newspaper over here?" he asks, looking at the kitchen table."No, uhm, it's over here," back on the counter, Dorothy says. She shakes her head, lips tight.At the kitchen table, Barney flips through the newspaper, chats idly about the stories and the young ages of people in the obituaries. Dorothy listens without response until Barney stops, reads silently."Notes. Notes. Notes," Dorothy finally says, as if to herself, but for Barney's ears."I, uh, I don't know," she says, looking Barney's way. "I, you know, I, uh, I don't know why I bother writing these notes when no one cares to read them or, you know, look at them."She stares at Barney, who says nothing. Silence hangs in the air. Not looking up, he spoons more cereal.Dorothy holds the notes propped motionless in her hand, waiting for a reaction. With none coming, she lowers the slips, tosses them in the trash and heads to the bedroom to shower and change for church.Barney folds his paper, walks to the living room, clicks on the television."Barney doesn't listen to me," Dorothy would say later. "He's given up."Really, he heard every word."For better or for worse," Barney would later say.That some of the worst is now happening in Dorothy's brain is certain. But what are you supposed to do?You love someone. You take vows. Forty-four years married. Now this. The disease -- warping Dorothy's world, making her see him as a problem.Still, she is his girl.So you endure. Because, in Barney's mind, there is no choice.Back when they met, Barney was only 17, a skinny, faltering, jug-eared junior at Warrensburg High School, raised by his grandparents. Dorothy, 18, was the third of the five Dodge girls, a package of quiet pleasantness in glasses, a new Warrensburg High grad."Here comes that boy again!" Dorothy's dad, a carpenter, would call out each time Barney rolled his '47 Chevy up to their house.In two months, Barney proposed, on Valentine's Day. In August they married. They built a life. They built a family: Doug, then Darla, then two more boys, Chris and Andy.Sometimes Barney finds it inconceivable that one day, to Dorothy, it will all be forgotten -- even if, God knows, it wasn't always easy. If, at times, it was even unbearable.In the Gowins' living room, a photograph of Darla sits propped next to her ballet shoes cast in bronze. Arms arched over her head, smiling in her tutu, Darla is forever 5. The operation, the doctor had said, was supposed to be easy, just a routine tonsillectomy. Then the doctor came out. There's been a complication, he said. Something about Darla's heart.She lingered for days in an iron lung. They lay her body in a tiny coffin. A year later, trying to ease the pain, they had another child, Chris. Andy came a year after that.Some memories, Dorothy says, she won't mind losing.Yet never, even in their worst moments, did Barney doubt how much he loved his wife. And the same for her.This morning, struggling out of bed in the pre-dawn, Barney kissed Dorothy as she slept. He slipped on his work clothes and, at the back door, zipped up his sweat shirt. He bundled himself in his green plaid coat and work gloves.Outside, cold air. His breath, puffs of mist.The beam of his flashlight swept along the ground of the place they'd always dreamed of as he headed to the barn, stored with hay for their animals. More than 60 now on 40 acres. A virtual petting zoo. Goats. Sheep. Llamas. Donkeys. Ponies. Miniature horses.In the barn, Barney hoisted a shoulder-load of hay. A barn kitten skittered away. Duke and Duchess, their alabaster great Pyrenees, barked in the darkness.Coming out here, Barney can never help but think how much he loves it. The country air. The peace. The happiness they've shared.It hurts now. Nine years ago, when he and Dorothy finished building this house, about 40 miles north of downtown Kansas City, it was meant to be their retirement paradise.Two stories. Four bedrooms. Sweeping porch. Stone fireplace. A new sky-blue farmhouse that looked like those from their childhoods. And as their photos show, most of it built with their own hands.Barney: spreading concrete. Dorothy: smiling in a blue parka, three 2-by-6 boards slung over her shoulder. Together they cleared the land. They hauled the lumber. A place for happiness.Why not? This was retirement. Dorothy had worked years as a secretary in the city attorney's office in Kansas City. Barney had been a detective with the Metro Squad. The kids were out of the house, leading their own lives.Doug, in Washington, D.C., doing children's theater design and, at Christmas, working as a Santa. Chris, in Las Vegas, editing video, trying to be a writer. Andy, settled down in Independence, working at a golf course, father of Dylan, their only grandchild.Out here, before Alzheimer's, the plan was to indulge all their interests. Dorothy with her sewing, crafts, cooking. Barney making a mess with his constant home improvements.For a while Dorothy developed a painting bug. Barns in fields. Sunsets. Palm trees arching over the Hawaiian beach of their second honeymoon. Because Dorothy did them, Barney loved them. They hang all over the house.And it was the same with Dorothy's spinning yarn. That's why they first got the animals. For wool, you need sheep. So they started with two. Then they got Angora goats, then llamas. On weekends, dressed in period costume, Dorothy even sold her hats and shawls and blankets, "Dorothy's Woolies," in the lobby of the Elms Hotel in Excelsior Springs. She loved it.But now, with Alzheimer's, Dorothy spends so much energy railing -- against the house, against Barney. How, after nearly 10 years, the upstairs rooms still aren't finished. How the garage and basement are colossal messes. How even though none of that bothered either one of them before, it's all Barney's fault.But as Andy said, as all the kids say, "This is not the mom I grew up with."The disease has turned her. Once so warmhearted, she has even become abrupt with 5-year-old Dylan. They used to play like kids together. Now Andy has become reluctant to bring him to visit.But to Dorothy, it isn't the Alzheimer's, it's Barney who's making her so miserable.And it's rough to hear. Dorothy doesn't think he's listening. He is. She doesn't think he's read her notes. He has. Though she thinks he hovers, that he's a "controller," what is he supposed to do? He is the caregiver.So now he just stays silent. Maybe it's not the best strategy. But being a cop for 30 years doesn't just go away. You learn to disengage, keep things from getting worse.Every other Tuesday, he and Dorothy get in their truck and drive 52 miles to Prairie Village for the Alzheimer's Association support groups. Dorothy sits in one room with other patients. Barney sits in another with caregivers like himself.They tell him what he knows. It's hard to divine what's going on in the mind of someone with Alzheimer's, but she's probably scared to death.Lashing out is how some people with Alzheimer's grieve. Helpless against the disease, they do battle with their loved ones. Or maybe Dorothy's just voicing pent-up emotions, the disease causing her to erupt uncontrolled and uncensored. Or it could be, all her perceptions are illusions.Even in the early stages, people with Alzheimer's may see, feel, think things that aren't real. Paranoia. People are stealing from them, following them. Scared, they kick, hit, bite. They recall events that never happened.But in their minds, it's all real.Showered and dressed, Dorothy walks from the bedroom, gives Barney a tolerant smile."What do you think? I thought we might go to the movies later," Barney offers. "Maybe `Red Dragon' or `My Big Fat Greek Wedding.' ""Why would I want to see `Red Dragon'?" Dorothy asks.Barney smirks."You could see how Hannibal Lecter becomes `Hannibal the Cannibal,' " he says."Not my kind of a movie," she says.Barney walks to the bedroom to get ready for church. Dorothy goes to the kitchen again, begins straightening the papers on the table. She wears a white wool sweater and a purple wool skirt that she sewed.Two, three, five years from now, she knows she won't be able to do something as simple, as second nature as sew. Or cook. Or bathe."I know I'll, you know, probably just get worse," she'd say later.Having watched her mother and two sisters become empty-eyed and inert, she knows what that means.But if she fears her predicament, there's no sign."I think, uh, you know, I've adjusted to it quite well," she said.Her family thinks otherwise and that, perhaps, her nonchalance is part of her disease. Asked about her feelings, she says simply, "I'm not really scared." About the prospect of one day forgetting the names and faces of her family, her tone is academic, her voice detached."Well, you hope you can remember them forever," she says.Because right now, she believes she is nearly as capable as ever -- bathing, walking, talking, cooking, reading. She can still type, spin wool, sew, remember, relate.Dorothy walks into the living room.A lady called the other day and asked her to make a little stuffed animal for a church Nativity scene. A furry black and white sheep stands upright on the rug. She points to it.Took her barely a day, she says.Which isn't to say she's unaware the disease is spreading. She knows it is. Sometimes, only after it's too late, does she come to realize that her brain has been robbed, that Alzheimer's once again has slipped its tentacles through the creases of her gray matter, stolen some small bit of information or choked it off until it's dead.Like when she searches for words.For so long, they sat ready on her mind's shelves. Now, when she looks, she finds they've been taken.A couple of weeks back she went to sign a check: "Dorothy J. Gowin." She was in the middle of the signature. She stopped. Fear rose inside of her like vomit. She couldn't remember how to write the "J." She placed her pen at the top, the bottom. Her hand hesitated. Then, back it came. Not stolen, just hidden.But what she doesn't see -- or, if she does, won't acknowledge -- is how much her conversations are beginning to trail off. Most days it's hard to tell anything at all is the matter with Dorothy's speech. A few dropped words here or there.Dylan brings movies when he visits. "The one, the one, hmm," Dorothy thinks. "The one...you know." Long pauses. "With dinosaurs with, not Harrison Ford, the, uh..."Her eyes narrow. She struggles to remember "Jurassic Park." She never does.And more often now, her answers simply wander, like when asked what it is she admires most about Andy, her son. So she begins:"Well, uh, that, uh, that uh, he's uh, you know, he's uh, trying to, uh, you know, do things, the best he can...he's finally, uh, that he's finally, uh, that he had worked several places and this, uh, this, uh, this last, uh, friend that he had been, uh, doing landscaping with, uh, then that friend had, uh, in his family, got a big, uhm, when someone, you know, uhm, dies, and left him a lot of money, so, so now, his friend now, has a lot of property and, and, had a golf course and Dylan, uh, Doug, 'scuse me, Andy, is manager, uh, takes care of all the equipment. So he has a real good job now, uh, you know, uh working with, uh, keeping track of..."Though lost, she gives no clue that she might be. No, she is fine, she says.Still, she notices how people avoid talking to her. Even family. They call on the phone. When she answers, they quickly ask for Barney. They cut her off. She feels unloved. Feels Barney won't help.It's been nearly 10 years, 10 years, since they moved in.And this clutter. It says in the Alzheimer's Association pamphlets, clutter's not good for people with Alzheimer's. It confuses them. They can hurt themselves on it.Barney says he loves her. He says he's trying. But if he really loved her, Dorothy feels, he would do something."If you start a home, you think it should be finished," she said one day. "I have no idea what he thinks about anything."It is when talking about Barney that Dorothy's mood invariably spirals downward, until head bent in grief, she lets tears stream down her face and fall to the floor."Talk to Barney about it," she has said, "he thinks he's doing great. Nothing's wrong with the way he handles people...You think, uhm, you know, you're married to someone and when one person has a problem, the other person is going to jump in and then make it better."I've thought about leaving him...I have no place to go."On this morning, though, there are no tears, just distance.It's 9:30 a.m.Barney comes out of the bedroom, walks up to Dorothy at the kitchen island, kisses her."Ready for church?" he asks.Late Sunday afternoon sky, the color of blue eyes.For Barney and Dorothy it doesn't get any better. This was the dream, before Dorothy's Alzheimer's."Want to go out and feed the fish?" Barney asks his wife. "Sweetie," he calls her. "Duke's out in the pasture now."Driving back from church and lunch, they'd spotted the dog out there, walking knee-high to the llamas."Rejoice in the Lord always," the minister had preached. "Again, I say rejoice. Let all know the Lord is at hand. Have no anxiety about anything..."No anxiety...about anything. If only.The back door smacks closed. Barney walks to the barn as Dorothy stops and, for a minute, rummages through a bramble of vines at the side of the house."That a cantaloupe?" Barney shouts up from the base of the barn. He grips an old Folger's coffee can filled with pellet food. Grins across the distance."Maybe a pumpkin," she yells back. Then looks again. "No, it's a cantaloupe." Her smile stretches back to Barney.If Barney could he would multiply these moments and hold them in his pockets, like seeds, enough to sprinkle handfuls every day. And so would Dorothy.Moments like this are what they both desire now. Every time Barney finds himself embraced in one, he's grateful, as if in darkness he's been lucky enough to snatch a beam of light, which he knows will melt away.At the barn, he waits for Dorothy and walks with her through the pasture gates, across the stubble of grass to the pond's edge."The water was up to the top of these rocks," Barney says."Been so dry," she says.They cast the pellets across the water. Sheep, seeing the fish food, gather around and nudge the couple with their noses. Llamas, in the distance, stare at them from their lady eyes.It's a nice moment. Barney will take it, as it wasn't so nice before they stepped outside."I'm going to e-mail Nemy," Dorothy says.She sits in the kitchen at the WebTV and calls up the e-mail from Nemy, her niece, daughter to her sister Barbara, who lives in Warrensburg.Already this week Dorothy was blasted with bad news. Bill, her brother in California, was diagnosed with lung cancer. In California, too, Betty, the only other surviving sister besides Barbara, was having liver problems.Now, according to Nemy, it looks like Barbara is showing signs of Alzheimer's, too, refusing to bathe, forgetting familiar names, faces.Six women in one family. Mom. Joan. Wilma, Dorothy. Barbara. Betty. All but Betty stricken with Alzheimer's. Now she and Bill are sick, too."I haven't had the opportunity to speak with Mom's doctors," Nemy's note reads. "David usually takes her to her appointments and does talk to her doctors. He's of the opinion that Mom has Alzheimer's or at least the early stages of it. Mom gets upset when David talks to her doctors, and she tells David that he doesn't think she's got any brain left."Do you think it's possible for a person to fool an Alzheimer's screening test?...I don't know -- but each time I talk to her she seems so disconnected from reality. I think she is in denial because she doesn't want people to know what she does have."Dorothy begins to reply. Unlike her speech, her writing is clear."Nemy," she writes. "Possibly, Barbara is just putting on, saying what she thinks they want to hear. Alzheimer's patients never want to acknowledge the fact that they have changed..."In the living room Barney watches Sunday football. He knows Dorothy's time on the computer is good for her -- anything to keep her mind active, perhaps help stall the disease. But Barney also knows her computer time probably won't turn out well for him. It often doesn't.When Dorothy gets going about Alzheimer's, she invariably turns exasperated. She sours on him, whips off e-mails in the Oprah and Dr. Phil chat rooms about Barney being self-centered."Writing back a message?" Barney calls out from the living room."Uh-huh. Nemy," Dorothy says.Soon her mood does change. She stops writing. She talks again about Barney as an abuser who's given up on everything. Her voice becomes firm. Her sister, Dorothy suspects, may be having the same problems with her husband.A confused look sweeps across her eyes. She is lost but continues on. Her voice grows unsure." 'Cause," she says, "you never want to think you've got it, even though, uh, I thought, long since I got the confession" -- she meant diagnosis -- "that I might have it, maybe, you never want to tell, you know, everything you said, exactly what you said, what they can pick up on, so I have, uh, they're uh..."Dorothy turns back to the e-mail she's writing to Nemy.On the screen the cursor remains in place, blinking, for seconds. Past a minute. Then two. Dorothy's fingers remain propped, motionless above the keys.The silence continues until..."Nemy, please call," she taps at last. "I would like to talk to you."The 12 ladies in Dorothy's "Friends Circle" had gotten together weeks earlier. To make the place look nice, Barney had cleaned up the yard. Together they had straightened the house. Dorothy had baked oatmeal cookies, made a white frosted cake, iced tea and whipped out a table runner on her sewing machine just for the occasion."What are some of the things you like best about fall, or maybe a favorite fall memory?" one friend had asked, just a conversation starter.The question circled the room. Dorothy's turn. She looked off as she twisted and retwisted a piece of yarn around her fingers. It's a new habit. Sometimes she'll turn a pen round and round. Fidgeting can be an early sign of the disease."My, uh, you know, happiest times were when we were doing stuff together," Dorothy told her friends.Then she talked about what everyone already knew. How she and Barney built the house. How they threw huge country barbecues. How when the boys were young, they'd go camping and fishing in Colorado, at Heber Springs in Arkansas.The answer had nothing to do with autumn. Just a happy memory. But no matter. Dorothy sighed, looked down and forced a meager smile.So often these days her happy recollections segue into her frustrations with Barney. Her friends have heard it all before.She thought they'd travel more in retirement, she says. She thought they'd finally visit their eldest son, Doug, in Washington, D.C. But Barney, Dorothy's now convinced, loves his animals more than her and uses them as an excuse. Can't go anywhere, must feed the animals.But the thing is, when Dorothy is out among the animals, rarely is she anything but content. She happily recalls the names and stories of all 63 -- Duke, Duchess, Moses, Delta Dawn, Princess, Sonny, Lolita, Harvey...Back in the pasture, Barney and Dorothy stroll quietly, the dogs at their sides, the sheep ambling behind in a meandering follow-the-leader. Then, along a slope overlooking their southern acres, Dorothy stops and points."Wild turkeys," she says. Her face brightens, the ebullient pre-Alzheimer's smile found in nearly every one of their old photos: she and Barney square dancing; she and Barney camping; posing with the kids.Barney and Dorothy stand in silence, looking out at the birds. Barney looks at this watch. It's getting on to 4."We probably should be going if we want to make that picture," he says.It's almost 6:30 when they emerge from the cineplex at the Ameristar Casino, smiling, chuckling with each other as they recount their favorite parts of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding."It's easy to forget, on days like this, the unstoppable wrong that's taking over Dorothy's brain. So much feels nice like it used to.Barney pulls out of the parking lot and crosses the road to the 210 Grill. Plate-glass windows, chrome, booths, carpet -- a fancy diner that's nearly vacant right now. Dorothy seems about as happy as she has been all day. Barney, too.They open their big menus and order their big meals. A mound of nachos for Dorothy. Tenderloin sandwich for Barney."We eat out mostly now for dinner," Barney had explained, though not because of the Alzheimer's.Right now Dorothy can still cook. But neither has any illusions. In the not-too-distant future, the kitchen will rise as a dangerous place for Dorothy.Her disease will worsen. Her memory and abilities will deteriorate. In time, even Barney realizes that the entire house will have to be made danger-proof.Knives, bleach, pills: locked away. The stove: childproof knobs, a lock, a disconnect switch. With her advancing dementia, Dorothy could just too easily burn herself, poison herself, forget to turn off the oven and set the house on fire. The clutter will have to be cleaned.For now, though, eating out is a convenience and a pleasure. With no car of her own, Dorothy, most days, is cooped up in the house by herself, while Barney works his post-retirement job at the auction barn.He struggled over whether to take the job, not wanting to leave Dorothy by herself for so long. At the Alzheimer's support group, though, friends convinced him it would give him a break. And it would allow Dorothy the gift of independence while she still has some to hold.So at night they eat out. They sit. They talk. At times, it's nice. Like tonight, when Dorothy is Dorothy again. Alzheimer's, for now, presses neither on her mind, nor on their lives."Did you bring your medicines, sweetie?" Barney asks. He turns his head. Seated next to him, she is snug at his right shoulder. He looks at her softly."Right here," she says, voice mild, grateful he would ask.Then, grinning, Barney starts to tell a story.Even though Dorothy has heard his story countless times, she smiles, looking up at him, and not just with anticipation, but something beyond that.Whatever Alzheimer's is doing to her, whatever it is ripping out of her mind, however it is hurting them, she loves him.Here, in this booth, it shows.The story, Barney says, is about two of the first goats he and Dorothy ever got.As he talks, she gazes at him."And to hold the goats," he says, "I built this little pen.""Barney built this pen," she repeats.So the story continues, with Dorothy's echoes."...I put pressed fiberboard over the windows...""Over the windows," she says.Barney weaving a tale..."...we're watching television and bam! bam! bam! we hear this sound...""Bam, this sound," she says."They're butting on the boards. Next thing we see is these two little goats.""Little goats," she says in her quieter voice."On the back porch.""Back porch."Watching Barney, as if there could be no more endearing story to tell of their lives..."Looking right in the window.""On our porch. They broke through, on the porch," she says.And no better man to tell it.Home, after 9, Barney clicks on a light in the kitchen. It's wintry outside, clear. In the pasture, the moon's light casts the animals as silhouettes. Eyes glow in the headlights of passing cars.Inside the house, Dorothy walks to where she began the day. She picks up her pen and pad, the journal of food and medicines she keeps on the kitchen island crowded with crackers, bread bags, pills in their amber vials."I'm trying to remember what I ate today," she says, "For lunch, I had...""Want to come out to the barn, put the sheep to bed," Barney interrupts. He's at the back door, slipping on his work gloves. He turns to Dorothy."Why would I be interested in doing that?" she says. Her tone is dismissive."No, I don't want to go down there. I told you, I have no interest in them. That's something you're...""I don't know," Barney interrupts. "Just thought you might want to."Silent irritation. She shakes her head, returns to writing in her pad.From the rear door, Barney steps to the wood deck. Breath freezes to vapor. The moon, a crescent set in black. The night sky, crisp with stars. So much quiet."This was a pretty good day, all in all," Barney would say later.Dorothy gradually began laying into Barney again soon after leaving the restaurant. The farther they drove from the diner, the more Dorothy's happiness seemed to recede. Once home, it was as if the good parts of the day never happened.Among the goats and sheep, Barney, walking behind, calls and scoots them from out of the cold and into their shed."Come on, girls. Come on," he says. They maneuver in the darkness, huddling together in warmth. He slides the shed door closed and walks back toward the house, pausing on the deck.He looks out at his land.Sometime back, thinking about Dorothy, about all they had built together and all that was disappearing, he had said, "I figure, the best I can do is support her and show her I love her."Meanwhile, you hope, he said. You hope for a cure. You hope for a better treatment. You hope the medicines will slow down the disease."Sometimes," he says, "you want to look at God and say, `I know you don't give us any more than we can take, but it's getting mighty close."'He worries. Some things he can take care of, like long-term health insurance. He and Dorothy both have it. If Dorothy one day needs to go to a nursing home, if she just becomes too much for Barney to handle, they'll be able to afford it.Still, what if something happens to him before Dorothy dies? A few years back he had open-heart surgery. Doug, Chris, Andy -- the boys all promised that if Barney died, they'd be there for their mom. But promises aren't doing, Barney says. They all have lives. He doesn't want her to be left alone.He opens the back door, walks in and removes his jacket and gloves. In the kitchen, Dorothy, still at the island, arranges and rearranges her medicines, the boxes of food."You hope to have the best day you can have," Barney once said. "If you have four hours, you have four hours and that was good. If you have eight hours, that's twice as good. You do the best you can. At the end of the day, I just give thanks for the day we had."Just as their day began, Barney moves to Dorothy's side, loops his left arm over her shoulder. Back on the porch he had a thought. Maybe this winter he can get someone to watch the animals for a few days. Then he and Dorothy can go out and visit Doug in Washington. Then maybe he can even finish some of the house projects Dorothy worries about.At her shoulder, Barney tilts his head toward his wife's. He keeps the idea to himself."Kiss?" he says.She turns, offers a quick kiss, then turns back away.Barney walks to the living room, sits in his recliner, turns on the news.Dorothy writes in her journal, alone at the island.

_ _ _

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The Good Day: An Alzheimer's Love Story

By ERIC ADLER

The Kansas City Star

More News

"Morning, sweetie," Barney says, walking in from the barn. "You're up earlier today." He hangs up his coat, moves to the dishwasher, begins putting plates away.

Staring at her pills through round, oversized glasses, Dorothy barely looks up.

"Early?" she says. "I guess."

She fidgets with her vials. Nasonex and Zyrtec for allergies. Wellbutrin for depression. Actonel, osteoporosis. Lipitor, cholesterol. ACTOS, diabetes. Exelon and vitamin E for Alzheimer's.

This is the routine.

Two years into a diagnosis of Alzheimer's, Dorothy no longer dwells on why her family has been so susceptible to the world's leading cause of dementia. Only 63, she has it now.

As a young woman, she watched for nearly 15 years as her mother shriveled in mind and body and died of the disease at age 71. Two of Dorothy's sisters -- like her, round and barely 5 feet tall -- went much faster and younger, one just last February.

Four and a half million Americans have Alzheimer's. No cure exists. No one knows the exact cause. But as America ages, few people will remain untouched by the disease.

Barring any medical breakthroughs, the number of cases will double in the next 25 years. Every day people examine their "senior moments." They wonder. They worry.

The first sign for Dorothy: She began forgetting items at the grocery store. She knew her family history. A doctor compared old and new head X-rays. Your brain is shrinking, he said.

So together she and Barney talked to the doctors, traveled to leading experts in St. Louis, to a support group. There they learned more about what they would face: how the loveliness of their life together would be tested. How, in time, everything about Dorothy -- her sweet devotion, her everyday optimism -- would wither.

Now the Gowins reach out for normalcy -- loving each other deeply, yet waltzing uneasily as they struggle toward one goal: to have good days, one at a time, knowing there will be fewer than they ever expected. Hoping today will be one of them.

It is a crisp Sunday morning, nearly 8:30.

Barney leans his face toward his wife's.

"Kiss?" he asks.

She turns, gives him a perfunctory peck, turns away.

A Kansas City homicide cop for 30 years -- easy, positive, scraggily bearded for his country retirement -- Barney already senses Dorothy's edginess.

"Have you had breakfast? Would you like coffee?" Barney asks.

He has been thinking about the day. Soon they'll get ready for church in Lawson. They can have lunch in town. Maybe take in a movie. Make a nice day. Make Dorothy happy.

"I'll make some coffee," Barney says.

Time was, not much more than a year before, when Dorothy would have greeted Barney's offer with a bright smile. Always, she was kind, giving, patient. "Mr. and Mrs. Congeniality," their children called them. Best friends.

At the island now, Dorothy picks up a pen. Carefully she jots down her breakfast in the spiral journal she uses to keep track of her doses, meals and blood sugar for diabetes.

"I already ate," she mutters to Barney.

She puts down her notebook amid scraps of paper, a pile of notes she began writing to Barney as the disease took hold. She wants desperately for Barney to read them, to act. To her misery, she believes he never will.

You are the reason for all our problems as you are an abusive and self-centered brute.

You aren't interested in finishing the house or in me.

You don't love me and only want to control me.

Every room of their country home is as cluttered as an attic with tools, toys, sewing stuff, boxes, photo albums.

And hundreds of Dorothy's notes, collecting for more than a year, seething in heaps. They cover the kitchen counter, the kitchen table, the coffee table, the nightstands. They are tucked inside the pages of books, scribbled on scratch pads, envelopes, listed and numbered on typing paper.

Dorothy's speech, once lucid, now comes out in fragments. She is only in the earliest, mild stages of the disease, but already simple words escape her. "Uhms" and "you knows" clog her sentences. Conversations ramble. She loses track, following vague thoughts aimlessly to some far off horizon where, her embarrassed eyes cast downward, her voice grows small and disappears.

In her notes, however, her feelings are clear.

Barney acts detestably. She feels alone. She feels isolated. Because, in her mind, Barney...

Has given up! (Slip of paper in the kitchen.)

Killed our marriage (Paper in the bedroom.)

Treats me like I'm dumb. (Living room.)

Takes great pleasure in making sure I never have a nice day -- one without him starting something so it goes bad.

Barney pours himself a bowl of cereal and crosses behind Dorothy at the island.

"Is the newspaper over here?" he asks, looking at the kitchen table.

"No, uhm, it's over here," back on the counter, Dorothy says. She shakes her head, lips tight.

At the kitchen table, Barney flips through the newspaper, chats idly about the stories and the young ages of people in the obituaries. Dorothy listens without response until Barney stops, reads silently.

"Notes. Notes. Notes," Dorothy finally says, as if to herself, but for Barney's ears.

"I, uh, I don't know," she says, looking Barney's way. "I, you know, I, uh, I don't know why I bother writing these notes when no one cares to read them or, you know, look at them."

She stares at Barney, who says nothing. Silence hangs in the air. Not looking up, he spoons more cereal.

Dorothy holds the notes propped motionless in her hand, waiting for a reaction. With none coming, she lowers the slips, tosses them in the trash and heads to the bedroom to shower and change for church.

Barney folds his paper, walks to the living room, clicks on the television.

"Barney doesn't listen to me," Dorothy would say later. "He's given up."

Really, he heard every word.

"For better or for worse," Barney would later say.

That some of the worst is now happening in Dorothy's brain is certain. But what are you supposed to do?

You love someone. You take vows. Forty-four years married. Now this. The disease -- warping Dorothy's world, making her see him as a problem.

Still, she is his girl.

So you endure. Because, in Barney's mind, there is no choice.

Back when they met, Barney was only 17, a skinny, faltering, jug-eared junior at Warrensburg High School, raised by his grandparents. Dorothy, 18, was the third of the five Dodge girls, a package of quiet pleasantness in glasses, a new Warrensburg High grad.

"Here comes that boy again!" Dorothy's dad, a carpenter, would call out each time Barney rolled his '47 Chevy up to their house.

In two months, Barney proposed, on Valentine's Day. In August they married. They built a life. They built a family: Doug, then Darla, then two more boys, Chris and Andy.

Sometimes Barney finds it inconceivable that one day, to Dorothy, it will all be forgotten -- even if, God knows, it wasn't always easy. If, at times, it was even unbearable.

In the Gowins' living room, a photograph of Darla sits propped next to her ballet shoes cast in bronze. Arms arched over her head, smiling in her tutu, Darla is forever 5. The operation, the doctor had said, was supposed to be easy, just a routine tonsillectomy. Then the doctor came out. There's been a complication, he said. Something about Darla's heart.

She lingered for days in an iron lung. They lay her body in a tiny coffin. A year later, trying to ease the pain, they had another child, Chris. Andy came a year after that.

Some memories, Dorothy says, she won't mind losing.

Yet never, even in their worst moments, did Barney doubt how much he loved his wife. And the same for her.

This morning, struggling out of bed in the pre-dawn, Barney kissed Dorothy as she slept. He slipped on his work clothes and, at the back door, zipped up his sweat shirt. He bundled himself in his green plaid coat and work gloves.

Outside, cold air. His breath, puffs of mist.

The beam of his flashlight swept along the ground of the place they'd always dreamed of as he headed to the barn, stored with hay for their animals. More than 60 now on 40 acres. A virtual petting zoo. Goats. Sheep. Llamas. Donkeys. Ponies. Miniature horses.

In the barn, Barney hoisted a shoulder-load of hay. A barn kitten skittered away. Duke and Duchess, their alabaster great Pyrenees, barked in the darkness.

Coming out here, Barney can never help but think how much he loves it. The country air. The peace. The happiness they've shared.

It hurts now. Nine years ago, when he and Dorothy finished building this house, about 40 miles north of downtown Kansas City, it was meant to be their retirement paradise.

Two stories. Four bedrooms. Sweeping porch. Stone fireplace. A new sky-blue farmhouse that looked like those from their childhoods. And as their photos show, most of it built with their own hands.

Barney: spreading concrete. Dorothy: smiling in a blue parka, three 2-by-6 boards slung over her shoulder. Together they cleared the land. They hauled the lumber. A place for happiness.

Why not? This was retirement. Dorothy had worked years as a secretary in the city attorney's office in Kansas City. Barney had been a detective with the Metro Squad. The kids were out of the house, leading their own lives.

Doug, in Washington, D.C., doing children's theater design and, at Christmas, working as a Santa. Chris, in Las Vegas, editing video, trying to be a writer. Andy, settled down in Independence, working at a golf course, father of Dylan, their only grandchild.

Out here, before Alzheimer's, the plan was to indulge all their interests. Dorothy with her sewing, crafts, cooking. Barney making a mess with his constant home improvements.

For a while Dorothy developed a painting bug. Barns in fields. Sunsets. Palm trees arching over the Hawaiian beach of their second honeymoon. Because Dorothy did them, Barney loved them. They hang all over the house.

And it was the same with Dorothy's spinning yarn. That's why they first got the animals. For wool, you need sheep. So they started with two. Then they got Angora goats, then llamas. On weekends, dressed in period costume, Dorothy even sold her hats and shawls and blankets, "Dorothy's Woolies," in the lobby of the Elms Hotel in Excelsior Springs. She loved it.

But now, with Alzheimer's, Dorothy spends so much energy railing -- against the house, against Barney. How, after nearly 10 years, the upstairs rooms still aren't finished. How the garage and basement are colossal messes. How even though none of that bothered either one of them before, it's all Barney's fault.

But as Andy said, as all the kids say, "This is not the mom I grew up with."

The disease has turned her. Once so warmhearted, she has even become abrupt with 5-year-old Dylan. They used to play like kids together. Now Andy has become reluctant to bring him to visit.

But to Dorothy, it isn't the Alzheimer's, it's Barney who's making her so miserable.

And it's rough to hear. Dorothy doesn't think he's listening. He is. She doesn't think he's read her notes. He has. Though she thinks he hovers, that he's a "controller," what is he supposed to do? He is the caregiver.

So now he just stays silent. Maybe it's not the best strategy. But being a cop for 30 years doesn't just go away. You learn to disengage, keep things from getting worse.

Every other Tuesday, he and Dorothy get in their truck and drive 52 miles to Prairie Village for the Alzheimer's Association support groups. Dorothy sits in one room with other patients. Barney sits in another with caregivers like himself.

They tell him what he knows. It's hard to divine what's going on in the mind of someone with Alzheimer's, but she's probably scared to death.

Lashing out is how some people with Alzheimer's grieve. Helpless against the disease, they do battle with their loved ones. Or maybe Dorothy's just voicing pent-up emotions, the disease causing her to erupt uncontrolled and uncensored. Or it could be, all her perceptions are illusions.

Even in the early stages, people with Alzheimer's may see, feel, think things that aren't real. Paranoia. People are stealing from them, following them. Scared, they kick, hit, bite. They recall events that never happened.

But in their minds, it's all real.

Showered and dressed, Dorothy walks from the bedroom, gives Barney a tolerant smile.

"What do you think? I thought we might go to the movies later," Barney offers. "Maybe `Red Dragon' or `My Big Fat Greek Wedding.' "

"Why would I want to see `Red Dragon'?" Dorothy asks.

Barney smirks.

"You could see how Hannibal Lecter becomes `Hannibal the Cannibal,' " he says.

"Not my kind of a movie," she says.

Barney walks to the bedroom to get ready for church. Dorothy goes to the kitchen again, begins straightening the papers on the table. She wears a white wool sweater and a purple wool skirt that she sewed.

Two, three, five years from now, she knows she won't be able to do something as simple, as second nature as sew. Or cook. Or bathe.

"I know I'll, you know, probably just get worse," she'd say later.

Having watched her mother and two sisters become empty-eyed and inert, she knows what that means.

But if she fears her predicament, there's no sign.

"I think, uh, you know, I've adjusted to it quite well," she said.

Her family thinks otherwise and that, perhaps, her nonchalance is part of her disease. Asked about her feelings, she says simply, "I'm not really scared." About the prospect of one day forgetting the names and faces of her family, her tone is academic, her voice detached.

"Well, you hope you can remember them forever," she says.

Because right now, she believes she is nearly as capable as ever -- bathing, walking, talking, cooking, reading. She can still type, spin wool, sew, remember, relate.

Dorothy walks into the living room.

A lady called the other day and asked her to make a little stuffed animal for a church Nativity scene. A furry black and white sheep stands upright on the rug. She points to it.

Took her barely a day, she says.

Which isn't to say she's unaware the disease is spreading. She knows it is. Sometimes, only after it's too late, does she come to realize that her brain has been robbed, that Alzheimer's once again has slipped its tentacles through the creases of her gray matter, stolen some small bit of information or choked it off until it's dead.

Like when she searches for words.

For so long, they sat ready on her mind's shelves. Now, when she looks, she finds they've been taken.

A couple of weeks back she went to sign a check: "Dorothy J. Gowin." She was in the middle of the signature. She stopped. Fear rose inside of her like vomit. She couldn't remember how to write the "J." She placed her pen at the top, the bottom. Her hand hesitated. Then, back it came. Not stolen, just hidden.

But what she doesn't see -- or, if she does, won't acknowledge -- is how much her conversations are beginning to trail off. Most days it's hard to tell anything at all is the matter with Dorothy's speech. A few dropped words here or there.

Dylan brings movies when he visits. "The one, the one, hmm," Dorothy thinks. "The one...you know." Long pauses. "With dinosaurs with, not Harrison Ford, the, uh..."

Her eyes narrow. She struggles to remember "Jurassic Park." She never does.

And more often now, her answers simply wander, like when asked what it is she admires most about Andy, her son. So she begins:

"Well, uh, that, uh, that uh, he's uh, you know, he's uh, trying to, uh, you know, do things, the best he can...he's finally, uh, that he's finally, uh, that he had worked several places and this, uh, this, uh, this last, uh, friend that he had been, uh, doing landscaping with, uh, then that friend had, uh, in his family, got a big, uhm, when someone, you know, uhm, dies, and left him a lot of money, so, so now, his friend now, has a lot of property and, and, had a golf course and Dylan, uh, Doug, 'scuse me, Andy, is manager, uh, takes care of all the equipment. So he has a real good job now, uh, you know, uh working with, uh, keeping track of..."

Though lost, she gives no clue that she might be. No, she is fine, she says.

Still, she notices how people avoid talking to her. Even family. They call on the phone. When she answers, they quickly ask for Barney. They cut her off. She feels unloved. Feels Barney won't help.

It's been nearly 10 years, 10 years, since they moved in.

And this clutter. It says in the Alzheimer's Association pamphlets, clutter's not good for people with Alzheimer's. It confuses them. They can hurt themselves on it.

Barney says he loves her. He says he's trying. But if he really loved her, Dorothy feels, he would do something.

"If you start a home, you think it should be finished," she said one day. "I have no idea what he thinks about anything."

It is when talking about Barney that Dorothy's mood invariably spirals downward, until head bent in grief, she lets tears stream down her face and fall to the floor.

"Talk to Barney about it," she has said, "he thinks he's doing great. Nothing's wrong with the way he handles people...You think, uhm, you know, you're married to someone and when one person has a problem, the other person is going to jump in and then make it better.

"I've thought about leaving him...I have no place to go."

On this morning, though, there are no tears, just distance.

It's 9:30 a.m.

Barney comes out of the bedroom, walks up to Dorothy at the kitchen island, kisses her.

"Ready for church?" he asks.

Late Sunday afternoon sky, the color of blue eyes.

For Barney and Dorothy it doesn't get any better. This was the dream, before Dorothy's Alzheimer's.

"Want to go out and feed the fish?" Barney asks his wife. "Sweetie," he calls her. "Duke's out in the pasture now."

Driving back from church and lunch, they'd spotted the dog out there, walking knee-high to the llamas.

"Rejoice in the Lord always," the minister had preached. "Again, I say rejoice. Let all know the Lord is at hand. Have no anxiety about anything..."

No anxiety...about anything. If only.

The back door smacks closed. Barney walks to the barn as Dorothy stops and, for a minute, rummages through a bramble of vines at the side of the house.

"That a cantaloupe?" Barney shouts up from the base of the barn. He grips an old Folger's coffee can filled with pellet food. Grins across the distance.

"Maybe a pumpkin," she yells back. Then looks again. "No, it's a cantaloupe." Her smile stretches back to Barney.

If Barney could he would multiply these moments and hold them in his pockets, like seeds, enough to sprinkle handfuls every day. And so would Dorothy.

Moments like this are what they both desire now. Every time Barney finds himself embraced in one, he's grateful, as if in darkness he's been lucky enough to snatch a beam of light, which he knows will melt away.

At the barn, he waits for Dorothy and walks with her through the pasture gates, across the stubble of grass to the pond's edge.

"The water was up to the top of these rocks," Barney says.

"Been so dry," she says.

They cast the pellets across the water. Sheep, seeing the fish food, gather around and nudge the couple with their noses. Llamas, in the distance, stare at them from their lady eyes.

It's a nice moment. Barney will take it, as it wasn't so nice before they stepped outside.

"I'm going to e-mail Nemy," Dorothy says.

She sits in the kitchen at the WebTV and calls up the e-mail from Nemy, her niece, daughter to her sister Barbara, who lives in Warrensburg.

Already this week Dorothy was blasted with bad news. Bill, her brother in California, was diagnosed with lung cancer. In California, too, Betty, the only other surviving sister besides Barbara, was having liver problems.

Now, according to Nemy, it looks like Barbara is showing signs of Alzheimer's, too, refusing to bathe, forgetting familiar names, faces.

Six women in one family. Mom. Joan. Wilma, Dorothy. Barbara. Betty. All but Betty stricken with Alzheimer's. Now she and Bill are sick, too.

"I haven't had the opportunity to speak with Mom's doctors," Nemy's note reads. "David usually takes her to her appointments and does talk to her doctors. He's of the opinion that Mom has Alzheimer's or at least the early stages of it. Mom gets upset when David talks to her doctors, and she tells David that he doesn't think she's got any brain left.

"Do you think it's possible for a person to fool an Alzheimer's screening test?...I don't know -- but each time I talk to her she seems so disconnected from reality. I think she is in denial because she doesn't want people to know what she does have."

Dorothy begins to reply. Unlike her speech, her writing is clear.

"Nemy," she writes. "Possibly, Barbara is just putting on, saying what she thinks they want to hear. Alzheimer's patients never want to acknowledge the fact that they have changed..."

In the living room Barney watches Sunday football. He knows Dorothy's time on the computer is good for her -- anything to keep her mind active, perhaps help stall the disease. But Barney also knows her computer time probably won't turn out well for him. It often doesn't.

When Dorothy gets going about Alzheimer's, she invariably turns exasperated. She sours on him, whips off e-mails in the Oprah and Dr. Phil chat rooms about Barney being self-centered.

"Writing back a message?" Barney calls out from the living room.

"Uh-huh. Nemy," Dorothy says.

Soon her mood does change. She stops writing. She talks again about Barney as an abuser who's given up on everything. Her voice becomes firm. Her sister, Dorothy suspects, may be having the same problems with her husband.

A confused look sweeps across her eyes. She is lost but continues on. Her voice grows unsure.

" 'Cause," she says, "you never want to think you've got it, even though, uh, I thought, long since I got the confession" -- she meant diagnosis -- "that I might have it, maybe, you never want to tell, you know, everything you said, exactly what you said, what they can pick up on, so I have, uh, they're uh..."

Dorothy turns back to the e-mail she's writing to Nemy.

On the screen the cursor remains in place, blinking, for seconds. Past a minute. Then two. Dorothy's fingers remain propped, motionless above the keys.

The silence continues until...

"Nemy, please call," she taps at last. "I would like to talk to you."

The 12 ladies in Dorothy's "Friends Circle" had gotten together weeks earlier. To make the place look nice, Barney had cleaned up the yard. Together they had straightened the house. Dorothy had baked oatmeal cookies, made a white frosted cake, iced tea and whipped out a table runner on her sewing machine just for the occasion.

"What are some of the things you like best about fall, or maybe a favorite fall memory?" one friend had asked, just a conversation starter.

The question circled the room. Dorothy's turn. She looked off as she twisted and retwisted a piece of yarn around her fingers. It's a new habit. Sometimes she'll turn a pen round and round. Fidgeting can be an early sign of the disease.

"My, uh, you know, happiest times were when we were doing stuff together," Dorothy told her friends.

Then she talked about what everyone already knew. How she and Barney built the house. How they threw huge country barbecues. How when the boys were young, they'd go camping and fishing in Colorado, at Heber Springs in Arkansas.

The answer had nothing to do with autumn. Just a happy memory. But no matter. Dorothy sighed, looked down and forced a meager smile.

So often these days her happy recollections segue into her frustrations with Barney. Her friends have heard it all before.

She thought they'd travel more in retirement, she says. She thought they'd finally visit their eldest son, Doug, in Washington, D.C. But Barney, Dorothy's now convinced, loves his animals more than her and uses them as an excuse. Can't go anywhere, must feed the animals.

But the thing is, when Dorothy is out among the animals, rarely is she anything but content. She happily recalls the names and stories of all 63 -- Duke, Duchess, Moses, Delta Dawn, Princess, Sonny, Lolita, Harvey...

Back in the pasture, Barney and Dorothy stroll quietly, the dogs at their sides, the sheep ambling behind in a meandering follow-the-leader. Then, along a slope overlooking their southern acres, Dorothy stops and points.

"Wild turkeys," she says. Her face brightens, the ebullient pre-Alzheimer's smile found in nearly every one of their old photos: she and Barney square dancing; she and Barney camping; posing with the kids.

Barney and Dorothy stand in silence, looking out at the birds. Barney looks at this watch. It's getting on to 4.

"We probably should be going if we want to make that picture," he says.

It's almost 6:30 when they emerge from the cineplex at the Ameristar Casino, smiling, chuckling with each other as they recount their favorite parts of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding."

It's easy to forget, on days like this, the unstoppable wrong that's taking over Dorothy's brain. So much feels nice like it used to.

Barney pulls out of the parking lot and crosses the road to the 210 Grill. Plate-glass windows, chrome, booths, carpet -- a fancy diner that's nearly vacant right now. Dorothy seems about as happy as she has been all day. Barney, too.

They open their big menus and order their big meals. A mound of nachos for Dorothy. Tenderloin sandwich for Barney.

"We eat out mostly now for dinner," Barney had explained, though not because of the Alzheimer's.

Right now Dorothy can still cook. But neither has any illusions. In the not-too-distant future, the kitchen will rise as a dangerous place for Dorothy.

Her disease will worsen. Her memory and abilities will deteriorate. In time, even Barney realizes that the entire house will have to be made danger-proof.

Knives, bleach, pills: locked away. The stove: childproof knobs, a lock, a disconnect switch. With her advancing dementia, Dorothy could just too easily burn herself, poison herself, forget to turn off the oven and set the house on fire. The clutter will have to be cleaned.

For now, though, eating out is a convenience and a pleasure. With no car of her own, Dorothy, most days, is cooped up in the house by herself, while Barney works his post-retirement job at the auction barn.

He struggled over whether to take the job, not wanting to leave Dorothy by herself for so long. At the Alzheimer's support group, though, friends convinced him it would give him a break. And it would allow Dorothy the gift of independence while she still has some to hold.

So at night they eat out. They sit. They talk. At times, it's nice. Like tonight, when Dorothy is Dorothy again. Alzheimer's, for now, presses neither on her mind, nor on their lives.

"Did you bring your medicines, sweetie?" Barney asks. He turns his head. Seated next to him, she is snug at his right shoulder. He looks at her softly.

"Right here," she says, voice mild, grateful he would ask.

Then, grinning, Barney starts to tell a story.

Even though Dorothy has heard his story countless times, she smiles, looking up at him, and not just with anticipation, but something beyond that.

Whatever Alzheimer's is doing to her, whatever it is ripping out of her mind, however it is hurting them, she loves him.

Here, in this booth, it shows.

The story, Barney says, is about two of the first goats he and Dorothy ever got.

As he talks, she gazes at him.

"And to hold the goats," he says, "I built this little pen."

"Barney built this pen," she repeats.

So the story continues, with Dorothy's echoes.

"...I put pressed fiberboard over the windows..."

"Over the windows," she says.

Barney weaving a tale...

"...we're watching television and bam! bam! bam! we hear this sound..."

"Bam, this sound," she says.

"They're butting on the boards. Next thing we see is these two little goats."

"Little goats," she says in her quieter voice.

"On the back porch."

"Back porch."

Watching Barney, as if there could be no more endearing story to tell of their lives...

"Looking right in the window."

"On our porch. They broke through, on the porch," she says.

And no better man to tell it.

Home, after 9, Barney clicks on a light in the kitchen. It's wintry outside, clear. In the pasture, the moon's light casts the animals as silhouettes. Eyes glow in the headlights of passing cars.

Inside the house, Dorothy walks to where she began the day. She picks up her pen and pad, the journal of food and medicines she keeps on the kitchen island crowded with crackers, bread bags, pills in their amber vials.

"I'm trying to remember what I ate today," she says, "For lunch, I had..."

"Want to come out to the barn, put the sheep to bed," Barney interrupts. He's at the back door, slipping on his work gloves. He turns to Dorothy.

"Why would I be interested in doing that?" she says. Her tone is dismissive.

"No, I don't want to go down there. I told you, I have no interest in them. That's something you're..."

"I don't know," Barney interrupts. "Just thought you might want to."

Silent irritation. She shakes her head, returns to writing in her pad.

From the rear door, Barney steps to the wood deck. Breath freezes to vapor. The moon, a crescent set in black. The night sky, crisp with stars. So much quiet.

"This was a pretty good day, all in all," Barney would say later.

Dorothy gradually began laying into Barney again soon after leaving the restaurant. The farther they drove from the diner, the more Dorothy's happiness seemed to recede. Once home, it was as if the good parts of the day never happened.

Among the goats and sheep, Barney, walking behind, calls and scoots them from out of the cold and into their shed.

"Come on, girls. Come on," he says. They maneuver in the darkness, huddling together in warmth. He slides the shed door closed and walks back toward the house, pausing on the deck.

He looks out at his land.

Sometime back, thinking about Dorothy, about all they had built together and all that was disappearing, he had said, "I figure, the best I can do is support her and show her I love her."

Meanwhile, you hope, he said. You hope for a cure. You hope for a better treatment. You hope the medicines will slow down the disease.

"Sometimes," he says, "you want to look at God and say, `I know you don't give us any more than we can take, but it's getting mighty close."'

He worries. Some things he can take care of, like long-term health insurance. He and Dorothy both have it. If Dorothy one day needs to go to a nursing home, if she just becomes too much for Barney to handle, they'll be able to afford it.

Still, what if something happens to him before Dorothy dies? A few years back he had open-heart surgery. Doug, Chris, Andy -- the boys all promised that if Barney died, they'd be there for their mom. But promises aren't doing, Barney says. They all have lives. He doesn't want her to be left alone.

He opens the back door, walks in and removes his jacket and gloves. In the kitchen, Dorothy, still at the island, arranges and rearranges her medicines, the boxes of food.

"You hope to have the best day you can have," Barney once said. "If you have four hours, you have four hours and that was good. If you have eight hours, that's twice as good. You do the best you can. At the end of the day, I just give thanks for the day we had."

Just as their day began, Barney moves to Dorothy's side, loops his left arm over her shoulder. Back on the porch he had a thought. Maybe this winter he can get someone to watch the animals for a few days. Then he and Dorothy can go out and visit Doug in Washington. Then maybe he can even finish some of the house projects Dorothy worries about.

At her shoulder, Barney tilts his head toward his wife's. He keeps the idea to himself.

"Kiss?" he says.

She turns, offers a quick kiss, then turns back away.

Barney walks to the living room, sits in his recliner, turns on the news.

Dorothy writes in her journal, alone at the island.