My sister has Alzheimers. What an awful shitty disease. She is in the last stages now, is bedridden, incontinent, can't speak beyond an occasional one-syllable slurred word, and doesn't seem to recognize me, my other sisters or brother, or her own children. She might still know her husband.
She had a brain scan some time ago that revealed massive deterioration in her frontal lobe. Why this has happened is unknown with any certainty. I've heard theories concerning what sets off the Alzheimers degeneration, everything from a virus to calcification of brain tissue, but as her brother I really don't care too much why this has happened, I just hate that it has happened.
Her husband is mad at God. He doesn't see how a merciful God could allow such a thing to rob any person of her faculties, especially not a woman who has just turned sixty and was always so vibrant, so inquisitive, so full of life and compassion. He will allow a Catholic interment for her when the time comes, as it will soon, but has no plans I know of for Extreme Unction, or a funeral mass. He is more or less reconciled to what is coming, says he will put her in a nursing home or hospice when he's convinced she no longer can recognize him, but I know he dreads that day, as we all do.
There are stories about possible cures, or at least medications that could slow the disease. These will not be available on time for my sister. All that we who love her can do is wait for her end and remember the child and the woman she was.
And live in fear that it will happen to us next.
I'm not mad at God, I just think God is remote, unknowing and uncaring. We're God's great science project and God is just observing us to find out what we'll do next.
Marilyn's relative young age makes this particularly devastating. My father showed his first symptoms of Alzheimer's at age 69- by his death at age 77 was pretty much as you describe Marilyn now. The "God" part of all this is VERY complicated. We live in a fallen world. Still, life in so many ways is unfair. I am reading through Ecclesiastes right now and it deals with that theme. ALS struck someone I know within the last decade: Larry Pickett. Larry and his brother Glenn were originally from Canton, MA. Glenn now lives in California and is a music professor at a Baptist college. Larry was an active Presbyterian layman in a suburban Atlanta, GA church. Larry's suffering and death, and its effect on the whole family profoundly affected Glenn. He has just finished writing a whole cantata (lengthy choir musical presentation) on the Book of Job which came out of his own wrestlings with God over the unfairness of Larry's death. In my own life, I have been through deep personal pain and unfairness over the past few years. I have struggled, but I am not turning away from God but drawing closer to Him. One guy, The Rev. John DeBrine says, "Difficulties will make us better or bitter". Listen, I don't mean to sermonize- what had happened to Marilyn is just horrible.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Bob, I always appreciate your thoughts. My only reaction is to wonder why we're in a fallen world. It seems like a pretty severe punishment for eating one piece of fruit. I'm beng slightly facetious here.)
DeleteIt was not as hard to say good-bye to Marilyn this time as it was last November. Jeanne told me she always says, "'Til next time," so I tried that and it helped.