it seemed unfathomable to gene that he might be seated in a chair in his dining room with maryellen offering him a tissue so that he might wipe away the remnants of a sneeze and that he would not be cognizant of the room , or the chair , might not have any idea that the form rising before him was a human being , let along his wife of forty years , that he might not understand that it was his own body that had made the sneeze , nor be able to fathom what a tissue might be nor what purpose it possibly could serve .