Love in the Time of Alzheimer's

On the day his doctor and I placed my now-late father in Silverado Senior Living, a San Juan Capistrano facility for those with Alzheimer’s or dementia, the director of family services handed me a book—a party favor, as it were, for having completed the hours of grueling paperwork that were required. It was titled “Talking to Alzheimer’s,” a sort of travel guide for the naïve tourist entering bizarre and uncharted territory.

The author teaches friends and family that the most effective method of verbal communication is to never initiate discussion. Instead, let the patient sail away, whatever his heading, and then follow along in the wake of disjointed words left behind. Heave your trusty compass overboard and go with the prevailing wind. Alter course if things get dicey; distract rather than reveal your emotional instability at witnessing his tragic transformation.

As I journeyed deeper into the book, I found a chapter about romance. And
I thought: “Really? In a memory-care facility? And at age 90?” True, not long before, my widowed father had shocked me when we’d been forced to address this topic. He had asked me to help him fill out a standard Saddleback Hospital medical form before checking in for a routine procedure, and we’d turned to the section that included questions about sexual dysfunction. I assumed he would skip over it and hastily flipped the page.

To my surprise, he announced: “Wait! This is a problem!” Guess some things are indeed ageless—or stubborn Irishmen like to think so.

It was reassuring to read that residents of this brave new world often turn to the familiar need for affection behind the closed doors of a lockdown facility. And with more than 950 Orange County residential-care facilities for the elderly, many of which shelter those who suffer from dementia, and 66,000 county residents who have an Alzheimer’s diagnosis or are at risk, there’s a whole lotta
lovin’ goin’ on.

Still, I wasn’t prepared for the man who emerged during his first months at Silverado Senior Living. Once he grew accustomed to his new surroundings, my father became a flirt. One of the staffers I befriended told me, “Your father is quite the gentleman. He kisses me on the cheek every day and loves to sit in my office all morning.” And one of the nurses said, “Your dad likes to hang out at our station. And he likes to dance during our socials.”

Was this the same man who four weeks before told me in no uncertain terms: “Get me out of here”?

Like a buzzing drone to honey, Daddy had honed in on the hive.

The book I’d been given prepared me for the possibility that I might see him holding hands with another patient, or maybe with his arms around someone.
Although patients may not know the object of their affection, they still know what to do for comfort. A kiss is still a kiss.

Daddy may not have remembered my mother or, after her death, his late-life paramour who’d been Mama’s best friend. Still, he was able to navigate that feeling.

A few months in, and the family services director was pleased to inform me that my father had found solace in and was protective of Betty, a petite—and married—resident. His brain may have been dying, but chivalry was not: He escorted her to the dining room each evening, although she often seemed not to know exactly who he was.

I once walked in on him at the doctor’s office in San Clemente. He and Betty had been ferried there by a Silverado caregiver for their respective appointments, and he was holding Betty’s hand. Then her husband walked in. My father, who wasn’t fooling anybody, casually let go and slid his palm under the sofa cushion as his eyes shifted.
Betty’s husband winked at me, just before he cupped both hands around his wife’s cheeks and kissed her forehead. His gesture told me that her memory of him was secondary to her contentment without him.

Back at Silverado, I noticed that my father darted away from Cynthia, a more formidable woman, whenever we entered the community room.
“She’s always after me,” he explained, and then skirted away while she waved wildly from her cushioned chair. No inhibitions stopped her from persevering, day after day. Love does not bend.

Think about it: They don’t have to fret about which jeans to wear to the local bistro, although several of the staff reported to me during our daily conversations that my father wanted desperately to “go shopping at Fashion Island for clothes.”

Shopping? I struggled to reconcile this image of my gigolo father with that of the simple carpenter who bought his khakis at Costco.

Alzheimer’s patients may be the only Orange County lovebirds never to worry about who pays the dinner check or whether anyone will awaken with regrets. For some, each meeting is the first—that exhilarating, heart-pounding thrill that only happens once—over and over again.

The Silverado Seniors listen to the evening peal of the ancient Mission Capistrano bells on a soft warm breeze, or sit side by side on the gardened patio as the Amtrak train horn blows. They can achieve in their relationships what the rest of us spend thousands of dollars in therapy to master: the ability to forget yesterday, stop stewing about tomorrow, and live only for this moment. Maybe the heart works best when the mind stops working.

I have no doubt love is wasted on the young. And maybe I’m trying to see things in the best possible light. But as my father moved further away from me and closer to a place I could not go, I was beginning to see possibility—call it a glimmer of hope.

Maybe we come into this world looking for love in all the wrong places. If we’re lucky, we find it; but either way, if we are blessed, we rediscover it, much later, in a place we only dream about, and in a manner that defies logic. Love finds a way.