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.
