TY - JOUR T1 - The Absence JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 983 LP - 986 VL - 55 IS - 521 AU - Jacques Chauviré Y1 - 2005/12/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/55/521/983.abstract N2 - Mr Bollène and his wife Louise lived in an ordinary apartment on the third floor of a block of flats without a lift.Both of them were at the wrong end of seventy in a middle-class area that had seen better times.For a year, Mrs Bollène's memory had been letting her down more and more. In spite of her efforts to pay heed, lapses and omissions made her confusion more obvious. Names slipped away and she couldn't find the words.Just yesterday, it had been impossible for her to remember the baker's name. She called him Monsieur Cadet although his name was Rousselle. He made a joke of it.Following this incident, which took no great explaining, Mr Bollène decided to do the shopping himself. Louise would accompany him. He was afraid that if he left her alone at home she would light the gas and perhaps burn herself.Mr Bollène, whom age had made anxious, smothered his wife with affection, but he wasn't spared weak legs and a few dizzy spells himself. Nevertheless, he helped Louise to climb up and down the staircase. And he led her by the arm into the street where, a little haltingly, she walked step by little step.He had to keep an eye on her whenever she was in the shops. Handling fruits and vegetables in order to judge whether a lettuce was fresh or a melon ripe enough, she sometimes shoplifted them, out of pure innocence.With age, she had slowly become stouter. Her skirts hugged her waist so closely that she had stopped holding them up with anything other than safety pins. The regularity of her appetite astonished Eugène. Afraid of running out of the staples, she sometimes hid a piece of bread or bun in a cupboard so that … ER -