Discovery's Plane Ride

Discovery's Plane Ride

Today, October 17, 2010, Kathryn and I took a journey into the future, a journey marked with life changing consequences for me, indeed for all of us. I should call it a water shed moment, because that is indeed what it is, a changed outlook, a modified demeanor, a shocking bringing up short.

I shall explain. About ten days ago, Kathryn received an email from Erin Heintz copied to Toni Williams in the Washington DC office of the Alzheimer's association. The note asked her if she would be willing to fly with me to DC to participate in a conference. The conference is focused on Maria Schriver's about to be released book about the impact of Alzheimer’s Disease on women, as recipients, as care partners, as service providers and as researchers.

K would give the opening remarks at the conference, based on our own story, edited by the staff at the Alzheimer’s Association, and reread by us to put it into Kathryn's own voice. Yes, of course she would do that. Anything for the cause.

The days since then have a been filled with nameless, countless preparations and arrangements. We are humbled and thrilled with the opportunity, yet there is a definite downside, shortly to be explained.

The conference is to be held in Washington DC on the eighteenth of the month. That would be tomorrow. They are flying us there for this 10 or 15 minute speech. Maria will Skype her opening remarks. Kathryn will be next to talk about the disease from the perspective of the recipient and then the discussion of the book, produced by Maria, will proceed. We received a copy of the book, beautifully printed, yesterday.

Now we are on the plane, flying to DC. I have my noise reducing earphones firmly snuggled into my ears. I am listening to a selection of Rachmaninof’s best, of his most romantic work. Kathryn sits in front of me, reading, studying, trying to learn and absorb more. I sit here in seat 18 b, trying to capture my thoughts and control my emotions.

I have spent the last hour reading the first few essays of Maria's book. It tells me what Kathryn's life, what my life, what our life will be like if I survive her.

These are the wrenching stories of people, of care partners, who have companioned their loved ones into the mental and physical oblivion named, for now, Alzheimer’s Disease.

These dear folks, like Maria Schriver, like Ronald Reagan's daughter, like the 16 year old girl taking her daddy through the last stages of his journey into obliviousness, of the lonely, stressed out wife slowly dying under the weight of her care partner/breadwinner/house maker/mother role, trying her best to survive and keep her exhausted life a secret from her family.

As I read, I saw us. I saw Kathryn. I saw me helping her with the inevitable confusion of life, which even now is apparent to a very modest extent. I felt the prescient pressures of pain of that monstrous day when she no longer knows her family, when she asks this man who is changing her diapers or bathing her who he is. I winced and wept inwardly, maybe for the first time, at this inevitability. I think of who she was and what she is inevitably becoming, which of course is but a demon's mask hiding what she once was and, most beautifully, what she will be again. Fortunately, I know she will be that great woman one day again. It’s the time between now and then, thoughts of which plague me as we fly toward destiny’s tests.

Today, I have for the first time really seen the short term future and I wonder and I am troubled about my ability to survive it. No one thrives in the role of care partner. But, can I survive to provide her with the caring, continuous care she has earned and deserves? Will 45 years together, our being joined at the heart, be sufficient to give my all, to withhold nothing, to leave nothing unused on this most desperate of playing fields so as to care for her as she has so long cared for and loved me and our children and our grandchildren, without question or condition or reticence. I am impressed now to say that with God, all things are possible.