No one has asked me this
yet, but I’ve been wondering how I would respond to the question, Do you feel cheated?
On
the face of things, maybe I should. We live in an era when many people are
living into their eighties and beyond. As recently as the 1930s, Americans were
expected to die in their mid-sixties. This was a key part of the original plan
for Social Security. By making sixty-two the minimum age, policymakers could
confidently predict that the average recipient would live for just three more
years. These days, life expectancy in America is a month or two short of eighty.
In
my extended family, I had a great-grandfather, Frank Christie, who lived almost
to 100. He was born in 1876 and died when I was in my early teens. His wife Alma
lived deep into her eighties. My maternal grandmother, Evelyn Christie, lived
to seventy-nine. My dad, thanks in part to what we would now call the
“Mediterranean Diet,” died in 2004, just shy of eighty-seven. My mother, a
recipient of good genes descended from Frank and Alma Christie, turned
eighty-seven this past March. She spends her time in an assisted-living home,
where she continues to paint watercolors, read, and enjoy herself.
Did
I assume, pre-diagnosis, that I too would reach my eighties? I didn’t take it
for granted, but it seemed probable. A few months earlier, I’d read an article
in The Atlantic Monthly titled “Why I
Hope to Die at 75.” (The title was not literally accurate. As the middle-aged
writer explained, his intention is that once he reaches seventy-five, he will
forgo medical treatment that would extend his life.) I asked myself at that
time if I too would be willing make such a vow. I wasn’t sure. I was still
confident that I would live to be seventy-five.
Family
members and friends have commented on how quickly after being diagnosed with
Alzheimer’s I conceived the idea of this blog. In my mind, I had no choice.
Writing has governed my life, in one way or another, since I started college.
It helps me make sense of the world.
But
there is another, more important, reason why I feel relatively at peace. All my
life, I’ve felt the love of others. I grew up in a home with two steady and
fair-minded parents, along with a big brother that I often wrestled with on the
living room rug in front of our fireplace, until one of our parents would
shout, “Look out for the mantel!” And it wasn’t just my family that gave me
love. I grew up in a wonderful city in northwest Washington at a time when kids
(boys, at least) were free to roam widely on their own.
As
an adult, I have never been short on friends.
Most
important, I have a loving and capable wife.
But
there is, of course, a very high probability that I will leave my wife a widow.
And this is where my calculus becomes more complicated. I am fortunate that my
youngest child is thirteen, and my son twenty-one, an adult in every sense.
But
there are times when the weight of my diagnosis oppresses me. This is almost
always as night, for as Ernest Hemingway pointed out in his painfully beautiful
novel The Sun Also Rises, “It is
awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it
is another thing.” The notion of leaving behind my loved ones has the power to
rupture sleep.
* *
* *
This is the first installment in what I conceive as
a weekly blog. While the text placed just above the image of Mount Baker and
the San Juan Islands is designed to give a taste of my thematic concerns, I
will also be writing about Alzheimer’s research and my personal struggle with
the disease.
MItch -- Thank you for this blog. I can already tell that will be amazing, and that I'll want to read every post. I'm hoping that you'll add a "Donate" button to the site so that your fans can send you funds to help support your project. I, for one, would like to contribute....
ReplyDeleteDear Mitch,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your thoughts via this blog. This is an important topic and you help us learn in a more personal and deep way.
All our best,
Alice and Martin
Thx. Enjoyed it. Me too. I just think the docs don't tell us the cool stuff about dementia.
ReplyDelete