DEMENTIA

DEMENTIA. Very sad with my brother. What can I say? There's been so much written about one's slide into Dementia/Alzheimers, whatever we choose to call it, not sure there's anything left to say. I don't know how to express it. We kind of know what happens, we just don't know exactly what to do about it. My brother had been a very successful businessman to now be reduced to total dependence. In many ways, the sadness is left for his children who have to clean up the mess he left behind, the result of very bad decisions. For him, he is enjoying himself basically in who he is presently. He has a full time caregiver and responds to very simple things. He is fine. His family's dealing with the real world, of course.

One way to look at it in a sense is to be angry at his f..k ups that bring us to this point. Let's tell his story with just one FU. My brother had been a bachelor for years, having escaped a "controlling witch". He had retired, bought a nice little cottage on a golf course, did a little work with our older brother on his peach farm. He met a woman and married her, against our unsolicited advice after we met her. To say we failed To connect would be quite the understatement. We had gone to visit. The brothers were very close. She resented our questions by telling us that it was none of our business. To be honest we were more or less joking, certainly not serious. This incensed our older brother who said, "I don't think you understand but we will knock our brother in the head, throw him in the trunk of the car and you'll never see him again." We weren't exactly kidding. My brother married her. She wasn't all that bad, we allowed. They were traveling, bought a new house. Things seemed to be proving us wrong. Eight months into the marriage, she had a massive brain aneurism. In the process of her near death, a baffling practical discovery surfaced. She had lied about her age. She was ten years older that she had led my brother to believe. Immediately, the ramifications surfaced. When you are 65 or seventy, in our medical world, age means one thing but when you are 80, it is something else entirely. As my brother dealt with the discovery, she had another aneurism. She survives but becomes an invalid. As a joke but maybe an example, my older brother says, "You couldn't kill her with an ax." And, in general, we take our Dad's mantra: you might as well laugh as cry. 10-15 years down the road, here we are. She is in a nursing home. My brother lives now, thankfully, with another brother. Is there something to take out of this tale of woe? A couple of things: (1) Get your act together while you can. Don't leave a mess for your relatives to clean up. (2) figure out, assuming the above is taken care of, how you'd like to live out the last few years of your life.