THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 10, 1994 TAG: 9411100168
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: John Pruitt
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines
Sometimes, when I get so frazzled that I can't remember why I went into a room or draw a blank on a name that I've called hundreds of time, I jokingly blame Alzheimer's disease.
But when it takes a little longer than I think it should for me to recall the reason for going into the room, or when a silent, supposedly memory-jogging, recitation of the ABC's gives absolutely no hint of that familiar name, I wonder.
I wonder if, like my father, I will get Alzheimer's. It's a frightening thought, and I sometimes joke about it to mask the concern.
The joking certainly isn't to make light of the disease. There is nothing funny about it. But even families affected by Alzheimer's understand that sometimes you laugh to keep from crying.
When former President Ronald Reagan announced he has early stages of Alzheimer's, I, like him, felt more sympathy for Nancy Reagan and other family members than for him. He's lived a great life, and it's tremendous good fortune that this hasn't occurred before his 83rd year.
It's difficult to visualize the amazingly youthful and nationally idolized Reagan with such a common man's ailment. Alzheimer's is a curse of the elderly, but sometimes this disease that kills brain cells afflicts people in the prime of life.
I knew practically nothing about Alzheimer's when my father's doctor first talked about it. I'd read about it, but it was just a topic, not something in which I had deep interest.
You know how it goes: You learn that someone close to you has an illness, then every little item about it jumps out to fetch your interest. The information was there; it just didn't connect.
All I knew was that my father had changed. Sometimes he was the tender, caring man he'd always been. At other times, he was vengeful and even violent toward my mother, the woman for whom he showed such love as my brothers and I grew up.
And all of this perplexing change seemingly occurred overnight - because our family hadn't known the warning signs. We wondered many times what on earth could have come over him to cause him to say some of the things he said and to do some of the things he did.
He no longer seemed like the quiet, Christian man we adored, the man of seemingly endless patience, the man who could bring in more crabs in his pots than anyone else and never utter a bragging word, the man who took everything in stride.
He was no longer the man with the wry sense of humor, the man who loved to tell of working with his father on a sailboat and how, during the Depression, he took jars of water and left-over biscuits to eat as he worked all day to make enough money for dinner.
We blamed the change on grief. My brother's accidental death had been a shattering blow to our family. And my father, always extremely quiet but not reclusive, became even more inward.
Even that didn't explain everything - things like, months after my brother's death, his coming downstairs to announce excitedly that my brother was coming down the lane to our house; things like threatening and attempting violence, leading us to hide knives, scissors, the hammer; things like refusing (we thought) to talk, then getting mad if my mother didn't immediately do what he wanted.
And all the while, our resentment - and guilt - grew. Even after the doctor explained that this man was not the father I'd grown up with, it was painful.
Why had he become so mean? Why had he lost interest in everything? How could he be so sick when he looked so healthy? Why did he demand so much attention? Didn't he realize all this was killing my mother?
Even now, years after his death, it's hard to separate the man who was my father and the man claimed by Alzheimer's. How much harder it must have been for him.
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