By Rona Barrett
“…I was unable, for the first time, to celebrate my 52 year anniversary with the love of my life.”
A friend of a friend posted these tender laments on her year-end Facebook page in response to watching her husband slowly succumb to the scourge of dementia.
“It is so difficult to see someone you love so very much disappear before your very eyes. It is so heart wrenching to have them look at you with pleading eyes as if to say, ‘What is happening to me?’”
What do you do, as the friend writes, when “…nothing you can say helps your beloved understand the deep dark hole they will eventually fall into with no chance of return?”
I can only offer, “You do the best you can.”
Easier said than done, I know. But here’s another thing I know: we can’t do it alone. We must allow our family and friends to help. There is also a wealth of information and support we can learn from and lean on out there—on the Internet, through books and with support groups.
We know it’s not curable, but it can be navigated.
Even Hollywood has deemed dementia a worthy subject area—probably because it has personally affected the high and the mighty as well as you and me. Here are two films worth watching:
Iris is based on the true story of acclaimed British philosopher and author Iris Murdoch who, critics note, “wrote utterly brilliantly of the life of the mind; how people love, deceive, how people react to events; the everyday lives of ordinary people.”
We see the gradual decline of Iris’ mind through the decline of the couple’s home. Slowly, papers pile up, dishes go unwashed, and even the couple’s appearances suffer. Iris’ husband takes on everything with very little help from the outside; the affect it has on their relationship is not spared, it is not sugarcoated.
Still Alice stars Julianne Moore as a fictional linguistics professor who at 50 is diagnosed with early onset familial Alzheimer’s disease, which severely tests her bonds with her husband and their family.
Each film shows a husband—because this disease threatens more women than men— in confusion about what to do to help his wife as she moves through the stages skidding into very severe impairment.
An estimated one in 64 of we Americans are now in some stage of dementia/ Alzheimer’s—the third leading cause of death in the United States after heart disease and cancer.
But I am convinced that if we can figure out a way to navigate it with the compass of love guiding us, in the end we will know in our hearts that we’ve done the best we can.
From her post, I can tell my friend’s friend is doing the best she can. She closes with:
“Please take time to hug your family and friends and tell them how very much you love them for tomorrow is not promised to any of us.”
Until next time…keep thinking the good thoughts.
— For more than 30 years, Rona Barrett was a pioneering entertainment reporter, commentator and producer. Since 2000, she has focused her attention and career on the growing crisis of housing and support for our aging population. She is the founder and CEO of the Rona Barrett Foundation, the catalyst behind Santa Ynez Valley’s first affordable senior housing, the Golden Inn & Village. Contact her at[email protected]. The opinions expressed are her own.
