There's this myth I read about once. A goddess fell in love with a young mortal and begged the gods to give him eternal life. They didn't like the situation but for some reason they followed her wishes. Time passed and the man still aged. Centuries passed and the man got older and older, his limbs folding over himself and his skin turned the color of tanned shoe leather. The goddess had neglected to ask for eternal youth to match. Eventually the goddess fell out of love with her lover and kept him hidden in a room of her temple. The gods were appaled with the situation, but they had promised the goddess to allow the man to live forever. But who could let the man suffer like this for eternity? The gods took mercy on him, changed him into a creature that would forever plague the grounds of the goddess's temple as a reminder of her selfishness. That is how the grasshopper came to be.
I find that story sadly ironic now.
In the beginning it was small things, senior moments we called them. She'd call from the store forgetting why she was there. Things of that nature. You see stuff like this on tv, and it's usually pretty funny. But, the senior moments occured more and more frequently. Finally, after she forgot to turn the stove off and nearly burnt down the kitchen, she went to see a doctor.
At first he thought it was stress. She started taking the perscriptions he gave her, but the incidents kept happening. Finally he refered her to a specialist. That's when we discovered the horrible truth. Alzheimers.
To say the least we were both surprised. We were told that there were treatments and medications that could slow the deteriation. They danced around the fact that these treatments and medications could not and would not cure the disease.
When we were kids, we'd hear about alzheimers, old people forgetting their spouse's name, their children's names. I can tell you right now, I wish that that was as bad as it got. It's not about losing names, dates and places, it's about lossing your mind.
You can't imagine what it's been like to watch her slowly fade away. I know she's so mad at herself for it too. I see her try to recognize our children, knowing that she should know their names, but nothing clicks. The kids still come, the flock still come, every single time that a new medication or treatment may miraculasly turn things around.
The day finally came, not long ago, when I came home and she didn't know my name. She knew I was her husband, her second in comand, but not my name. She broke down crying and I just held her. "It's okay, I don't know my real name either. Call me whatever you want as long as you still love me." I'd said.
To my displeasure, she started calling me Fnick. In a weird way, I was happy that she could remember that they called me Fnick, even if I hated it. I still held hope.
She had her good days, and her bad. I supposed it depended which way the wind blew. I put child-proof latches on the cabnets and drawers, locks on the refrigerater and basement doors, all so she wouldn't hurt herself on her bad days.
I went into early retirement to take care of her. Think about that sentence. "To take care of her." Not to be with her. How could I be with her if half the time it was like she wasn't there at all.
We kept a very strict schedule. I read in one of the guides to alzheimers that it makes it easier to remember things if you do it so reutinely. Laundry on Mondays, shopping on Tuesdays, The library on Wednesdays, Visits on Thursdays, Dates on Fridays. Saterdays we played games, a way for me to log her deteriation in hand-eye cordination, memory and motor skills. Sundays we relaxed.
It had gotten to the point where Max couldn't be trusted with a checkbook or credit card anymore, so I always put thirty dollors in a pouch around her neck. The pouch held her ID, a medical information card and her money. I was terrified that she'd get away from me and somebody would think that she was a crazy homeless person, or send her to a hospital psych ward. I couldn't let that happen so written in bold red ink on the information card were the words, "ALZHEIMER'S PATIENT."
Over time, it had become my responsibility to remind her to use the bathroom, bathe her, feed her and tell her the time of day over and over again. Strangely, I prefered not to have anybody's help. Why interupt their lives when she was my life to begin with.
I still loved her, I knew she still loved me, even if she couldn't remember my name anymore. I supposed I loved her because of all thing things that she wouldn't ever let herself forget, it was that she loved me.
Let me tell you something, no matter how bad it got, she did what Jeb had told her to do so often, she went with the flow. I'll give her that. If she couldn't remember a name, she called the person 'sweatheart', when she forgot what day it was, she asked, 'so what are we doing today, Fnick?' To this day, I can't decide if it was her being sneaky or if she was just trying to not let me down. Eithor way, she never let me down.
There came a point where she could no longer remember how to read. I thought it would be best to go to a movie on Wednesdays, but she gave me a warbly smile, "You could read to me, or we can check out books on tape if it's too much of a hassle?"
If it's too much of a hassle? She found ways to softly break my heart everyday. Take for instance the week she turned to me at the library and said. "The one good thing about my condition, I'm always surprised by the endings." Her smile stayed as brilliant as it always was.
One day, we were at a grocery store and Max was looking at the cheap paperback novels hanging on the impulse rack of the checkout lane. She said she liked to look at the cover art. There was a book with a spiral notebook sitting on the banister or a porch the title of the book was 'The Notebook'. She picked it up and admired it, she turned to me, "Fnick, can I have this." She asked.
I had no idea what the book was about, but the look of hopefulness in her eyes did leave any room for 'no.' I dropped the book on the conveyer belt and the cashier scanned it and dropped it in the bag with the toilet paper and toothpaste.
On the way home, I honestly thought she would forget about the book, but instead she turned to me and asked if I knew what the book was about.
"I didn't look at it too much. How about we check it out when we get home?" I said and continued the drive. I drove her everywhere, hoping that if taking the same routes everytime, if she were to get lost, she might remember how to get to one of the frequented places where people knew her; knew me. Everything had a perpose behind it.
In a way that shames me, I also hoped she would forget how to fly. I felt like such a monster taking the one thing that brought her peace, away from her. Again, I was terrified something would happen and she'd get lost or hurt. She later told me that she didn't forget. She was just afraid, for the same reasons I was.
When we got home after the drive she helped me carry the groceries inside. I put everything away and prepared a couple of Coke's and some sandwhiches and headed out to the patio. Max was already out there on the patio's bench, waiting with the paperback in her hands. "Ready?" she asked with a smile.
I set the tray down on the table in front of us and took the book from her hands. Max leaned her head onto my shoulder and I wrapped an arm around her. "Comfey?" I asked. She knodded with a smile. I started to read to her.
It took us a week to read the book. I don't how she did it, how she knew what that book was about, but she did. In case you don't know, the book is about a man who reads a journal to an old woman with Alzheimers. The journal tells the story of two lovers who fight tooth and nail to be together. In the end you discover that the man is the woman's husband and he reads the joural to her over and over again just so she'll remember him, if only for a few minutes.
The night I finished reading the book to her, I looked over to see her crying. I asked her what was wrong and she looked up at me and did something I'll never forget.
"Fang, I never want to forget you, but I don't want to you do something like that. I don't want you to waste your life trying to remind me. If- if..." And she stopped.
I stepped over to her and took her hands into mine. "Max, you'll never forget me. Even if you did, you wouldn't be able to stop me from reminding you." I said with a smile. All the while I kept thinking 'she remembered my name. Maybe the meds are working.'
But she got worse. As I said before, Alzheimers isn't just memory loss, it's the actual physical deteriation of the brain. Maybe it was our healing ability that actually made the progression worse, but a week after I finished the book Max had her first stroke.
Max never came home from the hospital. I stayed with her till the end. She had three more strokes while in the hospital and slipped into a coma that she never woke from.
I stayed by her side until the doctors pulled me out into the hall. "Mr. Ride, I'll be honest. Your wife, she's not going to come out of this. She's not going to be cured. Even if she woke up from the coma, we can't promise what kind of quality of life she'll have."
I looked the doctor in the eyes. "What are you suggesting?" I asked.
"Mr. Ride, I think your wife wouldn't want to live like this. I've been her physician for almost a year now, I know she wouldn't want to have mechines living for her. The decision is yours to make." He said.
At first I was furiated at what he was suggesting, but he was right. We decided to pull the plug.
The nurse turned off the ventilator. You'd think that would be it, that the monitors would go off and she'd be gone. But it wasn't like that. The ventilator only helped Max breath. It would take a while for Max's body to finally be unable to continue to support her. There was only the eerie rattle of her breathing. The doctors left me alone with her to say good bye.
"Max, you were my friend, my wife and my life. You have to know that this is killing me as much as it's killing you, but I know it's what you would want. I promised never to leave you, never again. But, maybe I should have gotten a promise from you. I've loved you for practically forever. I think I'll continue to love you forever. I hope wherever you're going, I wind up there one day, and you remember who I am. I love you, Max." I said into her ear as I held her hand and stroked her hair.
Her breath rattled and she gasped, it sounded like she was choking. It took all my will to call for the doctors, to tell them I changed my mind, I wanted the mechine back on, but I knew deep in my heart, that this was what Max wanted.
Max died yesterday, I came home today. I opened the front door, feeling alternatively numb and hearbroken. I slowly marched to our room and lay down on the bed and smelled her perfume in the air. I wondered if Max was looking down at me screaming 'What the heck! You killed me, you A-hole!' I wondered what she would be thinking right now.
I looked over to her side of the bed. On her beside table was an envelope that she had told me to open if anything were to happen to her. She'd written it shortly after she was diagnosed. I reached over and opened it. Inside there was a letter in Max's long forgotten script.
"Fang,
If you're reading this, something bad has happened. I want you to know right now that no matter how this disease will effect me in the future, I will always love you. I don't wish to be a burden on you... I guess in some ways, I already am. But if the day comes where I am gone, or there are hard choices to be made, I want you to know that I trust you to know what I would want. If there ever came a day, where I couldn't remember you, I want you to put me away and move on. You're a good man, a loyal friend, a great father and a wonderful soul-mate, you deserve to live your life not worrying if the crazy lady is going to burn the house down. I want what's best for you.
I know this is not what you want to hear, but I know that you've probably already made the hardest choice by now, and I want you to know that I'm not mad. I'm proud of you. I love you and I'm proud of you.
Forever and Always,
Max"
As I said before, she never let me down. Not once.