After she lost her speech, he became her translator

The year Lao Fang retired, his wife was diagnosed. Teacher Shen had a disease that would gradually take away her ability to move and to speak.

It receded the way a tide goes out. First her fingers lost their dexterity, and the woman who had written on a blackboard all her life could no longer hold chalk. Then walking. Then speech. One capability at a time.

The doctor took Lao Fang aside. Two or three years, he said, possibly longer. "The quality of the companionship depends on the family."

Lao Fang's answer was immediate. "She taught all her life. Her mouth was the sharpest thing about her. If she can't speak, then I'll be her microphone."

He turned that sentence into a craft.

In the early stage of her aphasia they used a writing board. He noticed her characters getting slower and slower, so he worked out a quick-translation system. He made cards of the household's common phrases and hung them on the wall: water. Raise the pillow. Close the window. I'm tired. Don't go. She pointed at one, he translated it. When the cards ran out he bought a whiteboard and filled a whole wall with the sentences of their daily life. Their son came home, saw the wall, and asked what on earth this was. Lao Fang said, "It's a database."

Then her hands declined too, and he began learning to read her eyes. The fineness of it was frightening. Eyes down meant she wanted to lie down. Two blinks meant no, that's wrong. Staring at something for more than three seconds meant it was connected to that thing. He wrote down every decoding in a notebook. Over the years he filled four of them. He calls them Teacher Shen's dictionary.

The entries look like this. Frown, plus a look toward the kitchen: she wants me to turn off the stove, she can smell something catching. A look at the windowsill, plus a lift of the chin: the jasmine needs water. Outer corners of the eyes down, plus a very soft mm: not pain. She misses our son and doesn't want him to worry. Staring at me, plus the smallest movement at the corner of her mouth: this is her smile. Her smile eventually came down to that one small movement, and I am the only person in the world who can see it.

The neighbors have watched him translate. When the community doctor came for a follow-up and asked how her appetite had been, Teacher Shen looked at Lao Fang. He said at once, "She means the medicine is bitter and she hasn't had much appetite lately. She wants me to put some of the pickled radish she made into the congee." The doctor was skeptical. Teacher Shen blinked twice. On the way out the doctor said, "Lao Fang, you two don't even need language anymore."

What it means to stay with someone is this: I can still hear you as your voice grows fainter — even at the end, when all that is left of your voice is a look.

After she died, Lao Fang photocopied and bound the four dictionaries. He gave one to his son and kept one. Young couples come to him for advice — other families in the neighborhood have run into the same situation — and he opens the notebook and gives them a few points.

One. Don't rush to make decisions for her. Let her say things the easiest way she can, even if that's a single look.

Two. It's all right to translate wrong. If you're wrong she'll tell you, and that is a conversation too.

Three. Treat every expression she makes as a new language to learn. You are not nursing a patient. You are learning, with the person you know best, a language that only the two of you will ever speak.

He wrote the last one on the flyleaf while she was still alive. The heading on that page is four characters long: She speaks. I am here.