I know every generation has gone through the challenges of caring for a family member or other loved one who has struggled with their own health care crisis. If you haven’t, you are blessed, for the pain of losing one you care for is some of the toughest times you’ll ever experience.
It seems our generation has been tasked with a number of challenges, but none so heartbreaking or emotionally wrenching than the effect dementia or Alzheimer’s has when it strikes a family member. To watch one that you love and respect be trapped inside a perfectly good body, but with no sense of who they are, what they have accomplished in life, or recognize those closest to them, is heartbreaking.
My parents both passed too early in life; my dad at only 45 years when I was 16, and my mother at the young age of 66. My dad suffered for nine months as cancer ravaged his physical being but never affected his mind. He fought a determined battle with good humor and a great spirit for his offspring.
My mom would pass shortly after her diagnosis with cancer due to complications and congestive heart failure. She passed only seven days after a diagnosis of the presence of lung cancer, but just enough time for my sister to return home from Japan, where she was teaching, and allowus to say our emotional goodbyes.
We were spared the agony of the years of blank stares, confusion, delusional episodes, paranoia, and memory loss that accompany this cruel and debilitating disease that seems all too prevalent in society today.
I had a wonderful friend in New Hampshire who was not so lucky. We met and became friends with him over 55 years ago through the fire service. He was what we referred to as a “call man” with the Concord Fire Department, where I had become a full-time firefighter. We also belonged to a volunteer rescue squad in our small community and would run on calls far out into the county, which had no such services.
I considered him a big brother of sorts, and we became best friends. I had the honor of being considered a member of his extended family. When I transitioned from the fire service to sales and marketing of fire apparatus, he often traveled with me due to our shared interests in emergency services.
I never thought of him as being “older,” just a lot wiser than me. I would even turn to him for advice when I was elected to serve as a city councilman in Concord or as a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives and the county delegation. We shared a relationship of respect and brotherhood that I will always be grateful for.
As the disease progressed, he failed to know me anymore, nor did he understand who his wife and children were. I wish I could have had one more night at his kitchen table to swap stories about our many trips and experiences, so I could hear him laugh about some of those adventures we shared together and see him recognize his wife, children, and grandkids.
Two other great friends from college are experiencing the same unfortunate challenges as she watchesthe man she met and fell in love with during their college years slip away from her ever so slowly. If there is a bright spot in the last year for them, it would have come when their daughter gave birth to their first grandchild, as Tom would smile holding that bundle of joy.
I then think about the recent tour I took of the new Watermark Assisted Living Facility, which has just opened here on the island, and how lucky we are to have a facility that dedicates twenty-two of those units to memory care. What a great relief it must be for those spouses who struggle with the challenge of providing their loved ones with the necessary care they are no longer able to provide.
This is America, a nation that comforts those in need and dedicates time, treasure, and talent to soften those impacts. This is the healthcare challenge of our generation and the next, one which impacts so many families, many of which we have personal contact with on a daily basis through family, friends, and neighbors. We can ill afford to turn our backs on this challenge and must become serious about how to confront it rather than hope someone else will.
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