New Year's Eve

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind ?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne ?
 Robert Burns

For 24 or 25 years I've spent New Year's Eve with Donna. I'm not too sure of how to mark the passing of time, and honestly it's not pertinent. We've never gone out for New Year's Eve. We've never made a big deal of it. We've never bought a bottle of champagne, made a festive meal, or sang Auld Lang Syne. And honestly I can't think of anything worse than going out in the cold for something like First Night. I sound so curmudgeonly., but mostly I just don't care about ringing out the old or ringing in the new.

Donna and Ripley have gone to bed. Neither of them are aware of the turning of the calendar to 2013. Donna doesn't seem to understand time in the same way anymore. She has a difficult time saying numbers, she often doesn't know how old she is, but she knows her birthday. She doesn't understand time in the same way anymore either...after all what's the point of knowing that something is happening in 15 minutes, 15 hours or 15 days when you can't remember what the something is anyway?

One thing that Alzheimer's has taught me is that the present is where life happens. Alzheimer's gets the reputation that someone slowly forgets their life's details, but you quickly learn it is not so simple. They forget your life's details too. As long as I meet Donna in the moment it's not so apparent that she's forgetting me more and more every day. The fact that she remembered my name a few days before Christmas was nice. Now I have a chance to say, "The last time she said my name was on that date." Or maybe next week she'll say it again, and I'll replace the date. I try not to go through days wondering if it's the last time she'll say or do something. What's the point of marking all the milestones in reverse? I'd rather they sneak up on me like when I realized she didn't know my name because she never said my name any more. It wasn't the disconnect that occurred when we went to Maine last summer when she completely forgot who I was - that was devastating - but there was something so utterly heartbreaking when I realized she didn't know my name. And still she mostly doesn't know my name so she calls me Rippy or honey. Who I am is more important than my name. Or so I tell myself.

It's not going to get any better and it's going to be a hard year this 'two oh one three'.

So, for all my friends and loved ones who still know me, and know my name, "we'll take a cup of kindness yet for auld lang syne." 





 

Love is what you do.

"Love isn't how you feel. It's what you do." 
Madeleine L'Engle 

If Madeleine L'Engle is right then I must be feeling a whole lotta love! There is snow headed our way so that meant an early trip to the grocery store to make sure we had the prerequisite milk and bread. 
 

For Donna there must be Greek yogurt, and sugar, and half & half because she lives on those. One of the most interesting things about the Alzheimer's brain is its increased  need for sugar. This isn't true for just Donna, and there's some interesting science behind her desperate need for Klondike bars - The Alzheimer's Project

One of the most difficult things about the progression of Donna's Alzheimer's is that I have to take on more and more. When Donna quit working she was still driving to familiar places. She could still use her GPS and cell phone. She still paid the bills. All of those things are long gone. It's been 3 years since she was officially diagnosed, and 5 years since she insisted to our nurse practitioner that there was something wrong. While so much has changed, so much remains the same.

With or without Alzheimer's there's always so much to do: laundry, pellets for the pellet stove to bring in and trash to take out, cooking and cleaning, and a million other things. While I'm busy doing all these things, Donna manages to do things as well. She is still making very simple quilts, she loves to color bright drawings with markers in all hues, and watching the birds at the feeder. I suppose those prove that she still loves life.

When people say, "I don't know how you do it" I say - what other choice is there - because we both love our lives - so we don't just feel that love; we do the things that show the evidence of that love. I'll try to remind myself of all of this later, because when I have to shovel 8 inches of snow I won't be humming a love song. I guarantee it!

Forgetting Donna

“The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.”
Friedrich Nietzsche


Here begins the blog. The way to keep connected to people who care about Donna and me. I named the blog Forgetting Donna because it describes her - an adjective - that captures what is happening to her. And also because just as Donna's memory is unraveling so too is everyone else. Her memories of us all are diminishing and so that shared history disappears from the world forever. No one will ever remember us in the same way she did. As she disappears little by little so too do we.

No matter how sad all of this can be, I also want to be able to tell funny stories about how  Alzheimer's also produces moments of great amusement and laughter. It's not all doom and gloom, and it's not all sunshine and lollipops. Just as life has always brought both, so too does Alzheimer's.

Donna is mostly happy. She and Ripley take care of each other. I think without Ripley Donna's life would be so bleak. The love of that dog keeps her connected to life in ways that you just can't imagine. When Donna is sad Ripley is right there next to her. When Donna is happy, Ripley smiles too. They are inseparable, and it makes me happy.

So, yes - here begins the blog.