THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 6, 1994 TAG: 9411060189
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: PAUL SOUTH
LENGTH: Medium: 91 lines
Before, she could remember the birthdays of her children, grandchildren, sisters, brothers, cousins and friends. She knew by heart the words to virtually every song in the Baptist Hymnal.
She knew just the right way to cook green beans and collards and candied yams. She would tell detailed stories of the day she taught her cousin Signa to drive, and of the basketball team she once coached in rural Fayette County, Ala.
And when I was in college, three hours away, she would call and ask, ``Are you watching Billy Graham? That George Beverly Shea is wonderful.''
That was then.
Now, she doesn't know what day it is. She has forgotten the names of even her immediate family. She asks sometimes for her mother, saying ``She needs to get me a new dress.''
Sometimes, she asks questions that pierce the heart. ``Where's your Daddy? Why doesn't he come to see me?'' And sometimes, you don't have the heart to remind her for the 1,000th time that Dad is six years gone. But when you do, the response is always the same.
``Oh yeah. That killed me.''
Indeed, the death of her only son broke my grandmother's heart. But what's killing my grandmother, month by month, day by day, minute by minute, is Alzheimer's disease.
Alzheimer's disease is like a neutron bomb, leaving the body intact, but destroying the mind and personality. It steals slowly, like a crafty embezzler, leaving Alzheimer's victims and their families to walk in the shadow of Job.
Four million American families walk in that shadow, watching their loved ones who are trapped in a mental time warp - intellectually sent back 30, 50, 70 years, but locked in the same body - as if they are the living dead.
It was Christmas 1987 when we first realized her mind was leaving. Then in the summer of 1988, I walked into her house to find fire shooting two feet into the air from her gas stove. Had I come 15 minutes later, there is little doubt that the house, and my grandmother, would be gone.
``You have to move, Momma,'' I told her not long after. ``You can't take care of yourself. We're going to get some folks to help you.''
On the day we moved her into a nursing home, she said, ``Don't make me go there. Why are you doing this, Paul? Your Daddy wouldn't do this.''
Deep in my heart, I know we have done the right thing, but the echo of her words sometimes comes back hard. And it hurts every time I return home and drive past the white house she loved on Birmingham's Finley Avenue, or by the East Thomas Baptist Church where she sang in the choir.
But the person who planted the roses in the backyard of the house, and sang ``When the Roll is Called Up Yonder,'' while present in body, is absent in heart and in mind. On my last visit our conversation is the same one we had each Sunday.
``Where are you working now?''
``In North Carolina for the Virginian-Pilot.''
``How long have you been there?
``You know, Momma. I'm just starting. I've been at the newspaper in Jasper.''
``That's right.''
``Why Paul, when did you get here? Are you still at Auburn?''
In a room bathed in sunlight, she says, ``It's awful dark in here.''
In a way, dealing with Alzheimer's is like handling a death in the family. There is guilt because you think there is something else you can do, but you don't know what. There is anger, at yourself for not wanting to visit, at God, wondering why he allows her agony to go on, and at white-coated clinicians who seem to be in a rush to make a tee time and treat this beloved human being like a nameless, faceless number.
Those are the bad days.
There are good days, but they are fewer and farther between. She laughs, she talks, and wraps her frail, gentle hand around yours, just like when you were little.
On those days, I remember weekends at her house. On golden October Saturdays, we would listen to Gary Sanders call Auburn games on the radio. Later, my grandfather would watch ``The Grand Ole Opry'' on television. Then came ``Hee Haw'' and Lawrence Welk.
Later, in the moments before sleep came, I would talk to my grandmother. ``Momma, it will always be like this, won't it?''
In the knowing that comes with age, she said nothing. She knew. She knew.
Those memories ease the ache a little now. But the reality that death will be her only deliverer stains those good days. And I confess that sometimes I wish that God would take her home to the place she sang about on Sundays long ago.
On some evenings, I watch Billy Graham, and George Beverly Shea, in the hopes that the phone will ring, and that sweet, familiar voice will be on the line.
``Are you watching Billy Graham?''
But the phone never rings. by CNB