Dear Babygirl,
Hi! I am Taher and I came to your item through "We luv in depth reviews! Contest"  by Kit  . Thanks ever so much for allowing us to do an indepth review of your item here. I hope to be able to guide you sincerely and correctly so that your item becomes something that can get awards and be there with the best of them.
This is a very nice story. It is so realistic, I feel it might be based on a true event. Being a non-American, I do not know what Montana winds are like, but I presume from your tale that they must be cold and killing indeed.
From the outset, it was apparent to me that you have written this from the heart. The pace of the story is at times reflective and at times, so rapid, that it seems as if you want to get the unimportant details (like the medical visits etc) over with as soon as possible. This made the reading a lot jerky and uncomfortable at times. For example, I would have liked to know a bit more about his visit to the doctor; a bit more about his many children and their families; a bit more about the forest and the plains that lay outside the homestead ... and perhaps a bit less about how exactly his children set about to make his financial affairs and his house and hearth comfortable.
The reason I say this is because those nitty-gritties take away from the main substance of the story ... which is about the struggle of one human against all odds, and about the enterprise of his family, who try their level best to help him ease off comfortably into life's sunset.
All in all, I feel that a shorter tale with more words on the emotions and less on the worldly realities would have been a winner. This huge story is over 30 KB!
Title, rating and brief description:
The title was very catchy. It was unusual and deserves a full rating. The item rating of "E" is also appropriate. The short description is grammatically wrong; it should have read: "A very close family finds themselves dealing with Alzheimer's." (Note the insertion of the Apostrophe and the Full stop.)
Contents of this item:
Jake and Mary could be from any part of the world; they could be Jose and Miriam from Mexico, Olaf and Olga from Sweden, Harish and Seeta from India or Husain and Hadia from the Gulf. They could be having 1,2,3,4,5 or even more children. The beauty of this family-centered story is that the names, locales and details are not important. The story is about old age, about love, about relationships, about caring and about sharing. Thus, it is universal in its appeal and timeless in its scope. The manner of treating such a story would ideally be to treat it at a human level, with sensitivity, emotions and love. I would rate your writing at about 3, that is, average. While there are portions which are beautifully written - for example, the dinner the couple have a few days before their children are due to visit them, or the scene between Jake and Kelly - the rest of the narrative concentrates too much on telling rather than showing us how the dozen-odd characters spent those agonising days till Jake decided to call it a day. Even the handling of the last few paragraphs needs a complete overhaul. I mean, see this sentence: "They got their mom out of her coat and boots and put her in her warm bed to sleep." - a totally unnecessary detail amidst the tumultous scene that was being described.
You really need to cut out those unneeded details and trim the contents from there!
Beginning and Ending lines:
The beginning was just average. If I had not been reviewing this item for a contest, I doubt if those first lines would have made me want to read an item that was so long and weighty. See if you can begin with a dialogue, or start at the end and go back in time. That may make it a bit more interesting. A suggestion for this might be to begin at the point where they find Jake against a tree, motionless, pulseless and at rest for ever. This will draw the reader in. It will make the title relevant at the very start. The rest could be written from Mary's point of view.
The ending read like the way newspapers end the reporting of a local event. There was hardly any drama. It was more like the epilogue of a book. I think the climax and the end was Jake's passing away. The other details are superfluous and add nothing to the story. I mean, what does it matter that his son bought some horses and revived the ranch, unless this has a personal pull for you, the writer.
Format, spacing, indenting, etc.:
Here are some specific suggestions on the formatting and spacing:
 Put the title in the center and make it bold using the correct Writing ML.
Use a line of dashes or asterisks (__ or ***) to separate the different sections of the story.
Separate all paragraphs from others either by a blank line or by indenting the beginning of each paragraph.
Remember that there should be no space after the opening quotation marks, before the closing quotation marks, before commas, full stops and semicolons. On the other hand, there must be one space before and after long dashes, before and after ellipses, after a comma, full stop or semi-colon and after a full stop that follows an abbreviation like etc. and so on. Undertake this exercise throughout the story and you would be improving it a lot.
You seem to have a grudge for the "apostrophe". There are so many instances where this punctuation is missing that it might be a better idea to just tell you that you need to search the story with a magnifying lens to put in those apostrophes. A general rule is that an apostrophe usually indicates possession by a person/thing of some physical item or attribute. For example, Jake's body, Mary's tears, Kelly's wisdom, or Montana's temperature.
At the same time, you have confused "its" with "it's" at many places. Apply the possession rule and many new apostrophes will appear, while some that are wrongly put will, hopefully, disappear.
Grammar and composition:
There are hundreds of errors throughout your item. I will try and show you those that I haven't already covered in the "Format" paragraphs above.
 >The tune sparked a memory of long ago when they built this house.< when they had built this house.
>The night the two of them moved in they danced in the living room to an old love song< they had danced ...
>how they looked back then< how they had looked ...
>and how they raised them in this house.< how they had raised them ...
>as Mary placed a plate of food on the table beside him.< Why not be specific? What was on that "plate of food"? Also, the phrase "on the table beside him" has two unneeded words "beside" and "him".  Eliminate those two words and the sentence remains meaningful and correct too.
>Most of the time it was little things but just now he forgot about two of the other kids they had.< Most of the time they were little things, but just now ...
but when she had tried to talk to him
">Yeah, I guess so, that’s what we built those rooms for?”< Totally wrong construct! There is a comma splice which must be corrected. Rewritten, this sentence will look like "Yeah, I guess so. Didn't we build those rooms for them?"
Add an apostrophe to all these (and many more words): Let*s, Jake*s, won*t, Alzheimer*s, doctor*s, father*s feet, husband*s loving hands, Henry*s wife.
Please re-write "Dr.Davis" as "Dr. Davis" (with one space after the salutation), throughout the story.
Oh God, Mary comma what is happening to me
Oh, please comma Mary comma don’t ever tell the kids
When they got to Dr.Davis’ office the next day comma Jake was a nervous wreck,
>be back here in the morning for me to give you the results.”Dr.Davis said< insert a space after the end of the quotation marks.
>That hit Jake like a ton of bricks. Never once had he considered this would happen to him. Jake was in such a state of shock< Since we are talking about Jake in all these three sentences, we can put "He" instead of his name in the final sentence too.
fresh linens for the beds ...shouldn't that be "fresh linen"?
When they got back to the house he took a shower and lie lay down on the bed and cried
and also found a doctor about a hundred miles away that deals with it. who dealt with such cases ...
The visit with the specialist is too long-win ded. You could skip the details about the hotel room and the exact re-telling of the medical history since the reader is now impatient to get on with the heart of the story. I think this entire passage can be reduced to a single, or at most, two lines. An example: After a long and arduous travel, Mary and Jake finally met with the doctor the next afternoon. The doctor's verdict was much in line with Dr. Davis's diagnosis. To Jake's question of how bad it was, the doctor sympathetically put his hand on his patient's shoulder and shook his head gravely ... Do you get the drift, Babygirl?
>we need to make some big decisions before I forget everything, chances are I could forget I even have Alzheimer’s< The sentence before the comma and the one after it are different and deserve a full stop in between!
>Mary said, “yes I think so, it’s only a few days away< Capitalise the "Y" in "yes"; End the sentence at "so"; start a new sentence with a dramatic "After all, it's only a few days away".
>because they didn’t know what condition he’s going to be in for Christmas< Convert this to simple past tense.
She had to remind him about several of them and helped help him pick out something special for each of them
>Kara came out and said she had had a similar experience with Jake also< The double "had" is essential to make this sentence into a past perfect tense, which it should be.
Mary called everyone inside as Jake handed each of them his their special gift.
>Jake asked that after they got the kids down for the night that they needed a family meeting.< What is this sentence? Please edit it properly.
Guys I have Alzheimer’s and its in its late stages ...The first "its" needs an apostrophe. Also, I remember reading that his disease was in its middle stage, so how did it progress to the last stage?
,”Kids, space here we have decided not to go in a nursing home.
He said he wants to live here till it*s his time (apostrophe)
Mary,Jake,Henry,Kelly and Ben went for a long ride over the country side. ... One space after the comma that follows after every name .
>They next day when everyone left< A typo error in the first word.
>He told them each how proud he is of them and how special they are in his heart.< Convert this sentence to simple past tense, please.
Jake sat down on a bail bale of hay beside her
I’m just a little worried comma that’s all.
investments that I can’t keep track of them all. space here Kelly, space here you know your Mom
assetts ... assets.
>I don’t want to hear of any objections either.ok.< Funny sentence. Let's drop that "ok", Okay?
The contraction "ok" is repeated at least 4-5 times in the passage where Mary laughed and said ... to Kelly was trying to tell him something. You must vary the telling of the tale a little or it bores the reader.
>They got some help and moved their parent’s bedroom to downstairs < Oh dear, oh dear! One moves beds, not bedrooms!
>The girls left knowing that their older sister was in charge< The correct relation is "elder sister".
>Kara said that Jake had woke up in the middle of the night< "woken up".
>When Mary came in the room she tried to talk to him and fortunately he recognized her and calmed down a little. < This entire para needs to be in "past perfect tense". So it will change to: When Mary had come in the room she had tried to talk to him and fortunately he had recognized her and had calmed down a little.
>A single set of tracks led from the barn down into the woods.< Tracks are made by machines. Humans leave foot-prints.
He had ran run as fast as he could to get away from there but had slowed down because the forest had gotten thick.
He was so cold all of the sudden :"all of a sudden".
>everybody else got there about that time < This is a new sentence, so "capitalize" the first word.
What things I liked:
As I said before, I liked the story as a whole. It is touching and human and has a universal scope and timelessness.
What things I did not like:
Not that I did not like, but I was a bit bored to read about unnecessary plebian details, and would have liked to have this story compressed to less than 20 KB.
Suggestions on improvement:
You must work on the grammar, writing style, and trimming to make this a world-class write-up.
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