Memory Bank

The story of my husband and me was a love story - a forty-five year love story!  After Alzheimer disease began to really take its toll, many people tried to tell me "It's not the same man you married"  and comments like that.  My response was always the same: "Yes he is, it is just that some of the bits aren't working so well any more".  And I truly believed that.  Certainly we had a couple of very rough years when he was very difficult and very abusive to me - the behaviours of the disease - but when the realization came to him of what he had been doing, he used to leave me touching little notes, laboriously  penned in almost illegible writing on a paper napkin or some other strange material.  After he was in care I found the pieces of paper towel (or whatever) on which he had had to work out and practice his message.  For the last 21/2 years of his life he really had no idea where I fitted in his life, but he always knew that I was that special person and sooner or later in a visit he almost always smiled and laughed and tried to reach out and touch me.  Sometimes it took an hour or more but the moment almost always came. I treasured those moments.  How incredibly frightening it must be to live in a state of ever increasing confusion where once familiar places, people and tasks turn into a nightmare; no wonder some Alzheimer patients lash out, run away or turn in on themselves in a desparate attempt to break out of the fog.