Scrabble

I've been meaning to see if Eddy can still play scrabble. Despite his dementia and perceptive inconsistencies he has retained his large vocabulary and his ability to spell in English and French. He is good at crossword puzzles as long as he is only required to answer the questions and not have to read and fill in the tiny squares. His motor skills can be erratic or non existent. Sometimes he just forgets he meant to move. We got the board set up, Pearl determined who would go first and we set up the play order. Me first, then Pearl, then Eddy. Pearl designated me the score keeper. The game went like this; Pearl and I would take our turns then Eddy's turn would come, one of us would ask him if he had a word to play, he would look at the board and start to de-construct what was there, seige became neige, sail became mail. He could see some words in his tiles but could not link them to the board. Pearl and I took turns taking his turn for him, double checking with him the spelling of the word.

A game of scrabble can last a pretty long time. Mark mowed the whole lawn and did some trimming while we soldiered on. I started cooking dinner and Pearl wrote down a few scores. By the end Eddy was listing a bit, his blood sugar was low and he was really struggling to make sense of the game. His eyes looked watery. We had completely pooped him out. I can't remember who won, we all ended up with a few extra tiles, rogue consonants defying placement.

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