Dad’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s stayed hidden
from everyone until I took over the medical administration of my parents in 2015.
Once I found out, there was a deafening silence from most of the people I know
even though virtually all of them would add, “My _____ had Alzheimer’s…” But there
was little help, little beyond people sadly shaking heads. Or horror stories. Lots
of those. Even the ones who knew about the disease seemed to have received a gag
order from some Central Alzheimer’s Command and did little more than mumble about
the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this part of
my blog…
As morbid as it might seem, I’ve saved two photos from “the end” of Dad’s
struggle against Alzheimer’s.
One is him sleeping in his bed, four days before he died. The other is
the apartment him and mom lived in; and passed in; empty of all their worldly possessions
after we’d picked over the stuff and took what we wanted.
As an aside, my wife went across the street yesterday to talk to the
daughter of a neighbor who passed suddenly…eight years ago. The house is still
there, unsold, and my wife found out, still unemptied. Her clothing still hangs
in a closet because one of her daughters has been unable to release her into
death…I hope she doesn’t come back to haunt somebody, but I can, with my fervid
imagination, come up with a wildly weird and creepy story…possibly involving
this creepy tree my son took a picture of:
The point of all this is that my wife and I were talking about
retirement. I retired a couple of months ago, she a bit more than a year ago.
We were reflecting on the amount of time helping Dad had consumed. As the
sibling closest to Mom and Dad’s place, I was more-or-less on call at all
hours. At first, it amounted to little more than taking Mom and Dad to their
appointments (medical and recreational); but as they deteriorated, the “appointments”
increased dramatically. After Mom died, it grew worse because she was no longer
there to answer Dad’s questions.
It was only mildly irritating at first, but as his Alzheimer’s shifted
into high gear and he plunged precipitously over the edge of deterioration, he
forgot more and more and was able to function less and less. The virtually
daily battle with the television set was perhaps my greatest pain-in-the-butt.
He had NO IDEA how to work the remote and it had to be reset almost daily. I tried
everything – taping the keys down (he peeled the tape away or reached the back
of the TV to mess with the buttons…my brother glued a cover over them and he
pried it off.), hiding the remote, anything! That prompted HIM to start hiding
the remote. Weekly, I had to search for it, finding it in various places in his
apartment (gym bag, bathroom drawers, dresser drawers, pillowcase, bedside
drawers…under the couch, in the couch, in the bed…once in the mini fridge he
had)
Then there were the constant phone calls. One I remember vividly:
“Guy, I have some bad news.”
“What is it, Dad?” My heart had started to race.
“I think your mother left me,” he answered with grim seriousness. I had
to take a deep breath, and in this case, my explanation that Mom had died two
years earlier, met with a deep sigh after which he said, “I know. I don’t
understand why I can’t remember that. It all seemed to clear to me then…”
While this isn’t an anniversary (except my wife and mine’s 33rd
Wedding Anniversary), it’s a reflection on the fact that Alzheimer’s and its
effects don’t disappear. Sometimes, they don’t even grow old or dimmer.
Sometimes, it seems like they will be unforgettable…
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