I like to get out in front of trends. This first-person but happily not autobiographical song about the confusion and sense of displacement and loss of self some Alzheimer disease victims experience was written when I was about 42.
I live in my head, pretty much — or maybe on the internet.
A disease of the mind — I mean, beyond what already besets me, of course — scares the daylights out of me.
I saw my grandfather succumb to the disease — before it had aquired its current name — and it was, as I would have told you then, really f—– up. He was an extraordinarily smart man for over 80 years and then it all fell apart. He disguised the symptoms as long as he could — which is maybe why, when it hit us what was going on, it was so surprising. In retrospect, I know the disease had been chipping away at the foundation of his life for some years.
Throughout his retirement he had worked hard to keep his mind active, taking up new hobbies and enthusiasms, keeping up with advances in his professional field, chemistry, even taking Spanish language lessons because he said, when he lived in Pennsylvania’s “Dutch country” he spoke German, and when he moved to California around around 1919 with his wife and two young children, he decided he should learn to speak Spanish. I remember the day, perhaps around 5 years before he died, when he said something like, I think senility is taking over my brain faster than I can learn new things. In past years, I used to learn a few new words of Spanish every week. Now, even though I take classes, I can feel my vocabulary shrinking, slipping away…
And there was a far away look in his eyes.
But it’s not always like that. As I wrote when I posted an earlier version of this song, I became reaquainted a few years ago with a gentleman from my old neighborhood when I was a little kid. He was always an easygoing guy when I knew him and he was aproaching his disease with the same equanimity.
Maybe it was because he didn’t fight it, I don’t know.
But I think I know that, all too likely, I’ll be like my grandfather, dragged screaming and fighting into the final dark tunnel.
I wrote this (happily fictional) first person account of facing Alzheimer’s not long after I turned 40. (I know. I know. Textbook stuff, huh?) Anyhow, a decade and change down the road the gaping maw of nescience doesn’t look any more appealing.
Yet, only a few years ago, I became reaquainted with an elderly man who had lived down the street from me as a toddler. He was in what turned out to be the final phase of his life. He’d been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a few years before and as he explained, while he could easily remember the 50’s when we lived on the same block, he also realized he wouldn’t remember tomorrow — or even in a few hours — that he’d talked to me today. Still, rather than bitter, angry and afraid, as I would be afraid of being, he was sunny and cheerful.
Sadly, the end of my own grandfather’s life was nowhere near as sunny. A man who had always prided himself on his intellect and his self-control was robbed, over time, of both. And the toll on my proud, strong grandmother was, in some ways, worse…
[New version coming soon] Someone Was Watching
someone was watching
I dont care what they saw
this terrible truth is a
secret all over the block
someone has fallen
someone can not get up
someone forgets what
someone was thinking of
now I don’t know what’s become of me now I don’t know what’s become of me
toys sparkle in the sunshine
sixty-five years ago
I reach out and touch them
but it’s not like I dont know
whatever was just happening
its all just like a dream
but this time I cant wake up
this time — I can’t even scream
now I don’t know what’s become of me now I don’t know what’s become of me
