In 1954, Kitty Kellen‘s “Little Things Mean a Lot” was number one on the charts, selling over 1 million copies. I was 14 at the time, and I don’t think I really understood the meaning and relevance of the song’s message. Now that I’m closing in on 86, it means much more to me.
Sarah and I have lived well throughout our marriage. In fact, I would say it’s been a joyful adventure. That was true even during the early stages of her Alzheimer’s. Early on, we decided to enjoy life and each other for as long as we were able. We did that by binging on all the things we had enjoyed before Alzheimer’s entered the picture. That meant going to movies, theatrical and musical events, eating out, and traveling. During the first 10 years, we ate out for lunch and dinner more than 6000 times. We also attended many musical and theatrical events not only in Columbia, our hometown, but in cities that were within a two-hour drive from here.
Travel also played an important role in our lives. We took a safari in Tanzania where we got a close look at lions, elephants, zebras, and other wild animals that we had only seen in zoos. We swam with iguanas, turtles and other marine life in the Galapagos Islands; and on our last international trip in 2015, we paraglided off a mountain in Switzerland where we turned a somersault on the way down.
Those days came to an end in 2020 after Sarah had a traumatic experience during eight days in the hospital with Covid. She’s been in the last stage of Alzheimer’s ever since. Before that, our world was very large. Today, it is very small. Our biggest daily events are going to a café downstairs for ice cream at 3:30 in the afternoon and having dinner at 4:30.
In addition, we have great times when we are alone. Sometimes that happens in the morning when Sarah wakes up early and is in a talkative mood. More often, it happens at night. We talk while watching music videos on YouTube. Our biggest surprise is that while our world is much smaller now than in the early stages of the disease, we have found ways to live joyfully.
We’ve learned to enjoy the little things. Best of all is simply being together. Every morning when she wakes up, I remind her that our first date was to a performance of Handel’s “Messiah” and that we enjoyed the performance, but being together was the highlight of the evening. That is still the case today.
I often refer to those times as “Happy Moments”. We’ve had quite a few of those in the past week. One of those days, she woke up at 6:30 in the morning, cheerful and talkative. That continued until she went to sleep that night. The other days were not as spectacular, but they, too, were punctuated with Happy Moments. Kitty Kallen was right. “Little Things Mean A Lot”.
