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The Only Memory Even Alzheimer’s Cannot Erase
The power of love
She’s delusional, I told everyone. She wants to believe it so badly that she has imagined it. It was June 2004, two years before my husband was officially diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease, and because I had watched TV programs and read magazine articles about it, I thought I knew most of what there was to know about Alzheimer’s Disease.
So when I heard Nancy Reagan say that her beloved “Ronnie”, who had been comatose for weeks, hadn’t acknowledged her in years, and hadn’t opened his eyes for days, suddenly, minutes before his last breath, opened his eyes, looked straight at her with clear bright blue eyes devoid of the chalkiness of the Alzheimer’s cloud, I was sure it was what she wished for in her imagination. She indicated that it was his last message of love to her. She called it the “greatest gift he could have given me.”
I called it nonsense and wishful thinking.
Alzheimer’s Disease steals the memories, cognition, abilities, and physical functions of once bright, accomplished, artists, authors, lawyers, doctors, presidents, and ordinary people. It turns them into shells with no memories of their lives or loved ones. It leaves them bedridden, infantile, and eventually kills them.
It’s a downward spiral from which no one recovers. When Alzheimer’s Disease steals an ability, it is lost forever. It does not regenerate.
I knew that. Everyone knew that, right?
However, I had always recognized and appreciated the deep love the Reagans had for one another because my husband and I shared the same type of loving bond. The physical, emotional, and mental closeness. Depending upon one another for emotional support, love, laughter, passion, and encouraging each other’s dreams and ambitions. Loving each other with a fierceness that nothing could tear apart.
The Reagans had it, so it would be natural for Nancy to think that her “Ronnie” could emerge from the memory destruction of Alzheimer’s Disease and convey his love for her one last time.
My heart broke for her, and I shed tears for a woman who was a stranger to me. But I didn’t believe a word she said.
