Each day they arise and get ready to make the trip from their homes where they live alone to the nursing homes where their spouses now reside.
For one, a round trip of twenty miles; for the other the round trip comes close to sixty miles.
Canes, walkers and crutches are taken as part of what walking steady nowadays requires. Walking any distance is taxing, it hurts and adds to the possibility of an accidental fall.
Sometimes the trip made is every day, sometimes it is only three times per week.
The goal is always the same. To visit with and comfort their life partner as much as is still possible. Last week they were not recognized, but on Monday she called out my name: leaving the men folk thrilled to the core. They drove home sitting taller, bothered less by the arthritis and spurs up and down the back, bothered less by the diabetes that taxes there energy. Inside they know that final recognition of them is close to finally evaporating: just another part of the dementia destruction process.
Both wives, you see, have Alzheimer’s disease. One has been a nursing home resident for nearly six years; the other for almost nine months.
For their generation, the vows of “for better or for worse, in sickness and in health,” meant vows that you lived with for life as they stood resolute on that wedding day some sixty plus years ago with their new brides.
The disease has been devastating to both couples yet they remain loyal, steadfast and dependent upon each other, drawing spiritual energy as a life line of hope.
As caregivers for all four of these parents, we marvel at their strength and reserve of endurance. On some days, I can almost hear playing in the background, the artist Yanni’s song entitled, “Until the last Moment,” as our fathers come and go in support of their dying wives.
As caregivers, my wife and I salute and admire both sets of parents who are teaching us every day about what raw courage, guts and tenacious resolve is all about.
These kinds of attributes are often written about in times of war and upon the battlefield. They also arise among folks fighting a fatal disease in having to face their own pending mortality or that of their loved one.
Our parents have been and will always remain our remarkable unique teachers.
With Love, Devotion and Admiration.
Jeff Dodson
June 17th 2012
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