TMI

Who is Joe? Joe is a man like most every other man. He is a man with a life history, a past with memories, a present with a variety of activities. Joe was a veteran of the Great War, a school teacher, a business man, a family man. He raised, or help raise, eight children and step children. He is a grandfather and a great grandfather. (Two of those great grandchildren are my grandchildren.)

Joe is also a man not like every other man. His memories are frailer. Today he may remember one of those names and tomorrow forget it. He will stare at a picture and say, "I know who they are, who are they?" Today he will tell me about each of his cousins. Tomorrow one of them will call and he will say, "Who was that?" The next day he will give family trees of each married cousin and where they currently live.

Joe is a man whose life is troubled and frustrating to himself and a challenge to others working with him. What to expect, which Joe will get up in the morning or come to the supper table at night is a constant mystery. Mid sentence he can move from Joe A to Joe B.

So, what does he remember and talk about the most? There was the trip that he took years ago to see lighthouses along the Atlantic coast. Each detail is etched in his mind. Conversations that the children had on the trip are repeated as often as the story. Then the sadness comes. None of those people keep in contact with him. It is a memory without a connection. I wasn't on the trip (but I could give you the itinerary). There was the trip to Seattle and Vancouver Island with the one person that he most wants to see and cannot. There were many trips that I never took with him, but others did, others who have lost contact with him. He shares the memories with me with the wistfulness of a happy time combined with a confused disconnection with the people he had those happy times with. He was a man who liked to travel, and those are his most often told stories. He remembers going places, and each place is connected to a person or people. To me they are just stories. To others they would be memories. So he shares with me stories that bring him as much angst as joy. That is the case with Joe, the man whose memories and mind are in a flux between the disquieting present the secure past.

How long can Joe stay like this? A year ago I would not have thought very long. The diagnosis wasn't good and a quick decline was forecast. Well, my bride and I have taken good care of him. The result is that he is healthy in body and stabilized in mind. He cannot back up and be independent. That is gone. And there is decline, but it is mild compared to the expectation. Others, including medical professionals, still say that he is capable of fooling many people that he has no problems if they talk to him on a good day. That means he could stay like this a long time. Stay being frustrated between two minds, between memories and reality, between desire and capability.