Last week I met three different couples whose stories were fundamentally the same - long marriage, geographically distant children, one partner losing to dementia or Alzheimers, the other struggling to imagine what to do next. The encounters were heartbreaking and inspiring at the same time.
My favorite was the outrageously sweet Italiam man married to a “Scotch Irish and you know what their temper is like” woman with Alzheimers. Both in their 80s, he’d been caring for her for over three years. Now it has become too hard. After this stay in the hospital she would go to a nursing home; but he would be there every day. With each scattered phrase she uttered, his attention, devotion, and care were evident. He would have said, as another woman said of her husband of 61 years (the last 5 years with Alzheimers) - "He’s my bashert."
My favorite was the outrageously sweet Italiam man married to a “Scotch Irish and you know what their temper is like” woman with Alzheimers. Both in their 80s, he’d been caring for her for over three years. Now it has become too hard. After this stay in the hospital she would go to a nursing home; but he would be there every day. With each scattered phrase she uttered, his attention, devotion, and care were evident. He would have said, as another woman said of her husband of 61 years (the last 5 years with Alzheimers) - "He’s my bashert."
I spoke with the wife of the third couple. She shared a bit of who they were and where they found themselves now. She spoke softly when she talked of the unexpected anger that had emerged in her husband’s illness. She then turned to me and asked: Isn’t it just depressingly sad to hear these stories?
Yes, I answered, the stories are sad, but they also give me hope. I can see more clearly that we are all in the same boat - and I wonder how I can get us all to pull together so we can feel less alone.
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