For better, for worse, in sickness and health. That’s the vow Pauline Raymond took. And she meant it, even though Larry is not the man he used to be.

Pauline Raymond, 69, didn’t know what was happening to her husband in 1983. The once-jovial, easy-going man who was a stage-builder for BIW started having fits of rage and hiding things all over their home.

He said her CDs were his, and took them. Secretly, while he slept at night, Pauline searched the house for the missing music. She ended up finding the CDs in the basement, stashed above a simple, white drop-down ceiling. Along with the CDs were guns, bags of stockings and canister upon canister of tennis balls. She knew something was wrong.

In 1985, she had her answer.

Their family doctor ran a few tests and found that Laurier “Larry” Raymond’s brain was shrinking.

Larry had dementia.

Pauline had met Larry in 1956 at the local roller-skating rink.

She fell in love with his hands.

“He was my baby,” remembers Pauline. “I knew. I knew when I saw him. Just the way his thumb used to hit the wall (while he skated). I saw everything I wanted in those hands. I knew they would support me, they’d build my home, they’d take care of my kids. They were just full of love.”

On April 19, 2008, it will be 50 years that they have been married, and Pauline now holds those hands that built their house in 1960; she takes care of him.

“When I took my vows, I took them seriously,” says Pauline on a recent sunny Tuesday as she spoons mashed carrots into her 72-year-old husband’s mouth. “For better, for worse, in sickness and health. And when he does go, if he does, I can say I’ve done a good job. I won’t feel guilty.”

For about 25 years, Pauline has stood by her husband while his brain has slowly died. Pauline says he has all the signs of Alzheimer’s disease.

At first, it was the mood changes. She remembers as far back as the ’80s Larry would become nervous if their three children channel surfed on the television or if a pillow was moved from a chair to the couch. Anxiety caused by change is a common early sign of dementia and Alzheimer’s.

Then in the mid-1990s, Larry began talking to pictures of his parents. Another sign.

Soon talking would become a problem.

“One time when I really started noticing how bad he was getting, he was sitting in the living room/dining room looking outside and he was trying to tell me something,” Pauline recalls. “And he kept on going, ‘Um. Ah. Ah.’ And he pointed. So I went to the window and I said, ‘What is it Larry?’ Then I noticed the mailman driving away. I said, ‘The mailbox?’ And he said, ‘Yes! Yes!’ I said, ‘Well, you wanna go get the mail?’ So he went and got the mail, but he had a hard time telling me what it was. And that’s when I really, really noticed.”

And things just kept getting worse. On Mother’s Day in 2005 Larry was committed to St. Mary’s for two weeks.

“The doctor (for) five years wanted me to send him here, and I didn’t. I took care of him. But after that (Mother’s Day), the doctor said, ‘Pauline, you can’t take care of him anymore. You can’t.’ And that was hard for me to let him go. It really was.”

Larry now lives at D’Youville Pavilion in Lewiston. Daily, except for when it snows, Pauline drives across town to take care of her husband.

She arrives around 10:30 a.m. and starts her visit with a shave. She gently cradles Larry’s face in her hand and lovingly runs an electric shaver over the white stubble. Larry seems not to notice the loud buzzing. He stopped talking in 2005, and stopped walking at the beginning of this year.

Then she may clean his teeth and file his nails. She may soak his feet or trim his hair. Then she’ll feed him and push him up and down the hallways of the locked wing.

Larry may mumble an occasional “yeah” or “no,” but those are the only understandable words.

Rarely, ever so rarely, his face lights up and he will look directly at Pauline and laugh. For a brief moment, he recognizes the woman he married when she was 19 and he was 23.

“One day, I came in here and my daughter was wheeling him and I was coming this way and I said, ‘Hi Toy!’ (a childhood nickname). And he put his hand up on me and he touched my head, and oh my God! That was my moment. That, that’s the part I miss. But I don’t think of the bad things, because he was doing a lot of things that were not him. And I never think of those things. I just think of the good things.”

Despite having friends that she roller skates with weekly, caregivers meetings and her daughter, who visits Larry each Sunday, Pauline feels very much alone. Family and friends love with all those years ago.

And she knows that when she goes to visit him the next day, he won’t know who she is.

“He doesn’t remember, no. But I remember him.”

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