Everything Nac

     In the final years of life, we would hope that we will be able to look back on all of the wonderful times of our lives without too many regrets and say to ourselves that it was worth the price of admission to have lived. Life was, after all was said and done, better for the most part. We would hope. Some of us do not have that kind of experience. On the edge of letting go and moving on, on the way towards death, many strange and awful turns can develop, some of them having nothing to do with the former mindsets of our loved ones and fellow citizens.

     Loneliness and dependency, incapacity and despair, constant pain and the fear that things will get worse as health and life expectancy fade are mood killers, for sure. None of us knows what it will be like to enter a time in our lives when we will become both more sensitized to our increasing debilitating condition and more desensitized to how our condition and our subsequent change in personality, from accepting to agitation, may affect those upon whom we are now relying, except those of us who have gone through a medical problem that completely debilitates us or have experienced this massive change in the life of someone we are caretaking.

     It is one thing to have been on death’s door and nearly pass and then to be brought back by a miracle cure or surgery, but it is quite another thing to be running out of time, out of options, and out of patience to wait for the unbearable pain to subside or for the humiliating incapacity to finally be over.

     Beyond these rigorous tests of our fortitude and good nature, there are the maddening outer reaches of dementia and Alzheimer’s. Those who, to us, were pillars of instinct and the foundational directions on the compass of our lives may eventually fall prey to mental or emotional breakdowns and saw-toothed personality changes that test our moral fiber and our own will to continue to serve them in their greatest hour of need. How can we put into perspective the lashing out, the hurtful insinuations, and the downright hateful comments sometimes said or screamed with the pain of a seeming lifetime of depression, solitude, indignities, and insolence at the hands of those who now seem to be our captors and interrogators?

     True enough, these peoples often fall prey to the designs of those under whose power they now are held in suspended animation, even those who would take advantage of them in their waning hours, whose design it is to nab their precious antiques, their lifelong treasures, their most personal objects and mementos, only to sell them at auction or to pawn them for a few dollars even before the shifting off of that mortal coil. Between the paranoias of intractable thoughts of their being destroyed right out from under their own noses and their being ripped from their own bodies by a herd of medical personnel, their minds become insatiably twisted with night mares of being taken to the cleaners.

     If there is not insult enough to our injuries, with the vultures, the tax man, the medical laws, the on-looking experts arm-chairing their way into our lives, then to top it all off, our legs may go bad on us or our minds.

     A friend of mine, we were quite close years ago, finally let me in on her family secret: Her mother had Alzheimer’s. The woman, then in her late 50’s, had been an active sort, playing tennis and making her way through life teaching high school science. Her children, 4 girls, loved her and she was happily married to a brainy and brawn curly-haired ivy-leaguer. She had it made, until one day in class she simply began to make comments that sent parents screaming and fellow faculty members scratching their heads. She completed this last semester of a brilliant career with a diatribe on her fantasy personal life, in graphic detail, and had to be removed from the classroom. Within a short time she was house bound, alcoholic, and then hospitalized, and this is when I met her. I began visiting her once a week and kept doing that until her death about a year later, when she had wasted down to 87 pounds and was as stiff as a winter branch. At first she could speak, and then she could only squeeze my hand, and at last, as her powers faded altogether, we would relate through her dilating her pupils. She truly had become a shadow of her former self. She left with faded dignity, saddened and depleted, her girls and husband stoically resolving not to break as if there were ever going to be enough time to prepare for such an end of life. Each of them wrestled with the thought of genetic testing. Even the shadows have shadows.

     Dementia. God save us all. If there were ever any beauty, let it be remembered now. The sliding door closes, and the stranger walks in, stumbling oblivion, the careless tyrant of all things fragile. If ever a human desperation has raised its head, it must bow before this mobster of the mind. Those who deal with it and those who suffer from it, these are the warriors of the dark battlefield. My hat is off. The only line that fits this scene is one written by Stephen Crane:

“Mother, whose heart hung humble as a button
On the bright splendid shroud of your son,
Do not weep.
War is kind.”

     For those of us in this war, may God protect us, give us strength, and help us to remember to be kind.

runningturtle87

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     Having completed 32 years of public school service, Chris Herrington lives, with his wife, in Appleby, Texas, and his writing consists of blogging and essay writing concerning an array of topics including education, mediation, self-development, and human interests. He teaches at the Martin School of Choice, plays racquetball, and enjoys his job.

     Chris Herrington can be reached at herrington@everythingnac.com