Posted on

Forgetting Family

Yesterday my brother, Larry, who lives in Birmingham dropped by on his way to his farm near Rogersville. This was the first time we had seen him in six months or more. For that reason, I was particularly interested in Kate’s memory of him. As she has done for other family members, she has asked me his name on several occasions. When he arrived, she didn’t get right up and greet him, but she did appear to recognize him. We had a nice conversation for a short while before leaving for the restaurant. As we walked out to the car, Kate pulled me aside and whispered, “Is he my brother?” I said, “He’s my brother, Larry.” We went on to the restaurant where we had a nice meal and good conversation. Nothing happened that would suggest that Kate’s memory was as poor as it is.

Before Larry left for his hotel last night, we decided to meet him at Panera this morning. As Kate and I left for Panera, I reminded her that we were meeting my brother. She said, “What’s his name?” I told her. Almost immediately, she asked again. I told her again. Then she repeated it several times. She works so hard to remember things, but her brain just won’t retain the information. I doubt that she remembers our having dinner together last night.

She got along fine this morning. The only obvious sign of her Alzheimer’s occurred when we were talking about young people and college. This related to Larry’s saying he had a number of friends whose children started in one college and changed to another. Kate indicated she had done that. Larry asked her where she had gone before TCU. She couldn’t remember. She said she thought it was someplace in Arkansas. It was really Oklahoma.

The visit with Larry is one of the few times that I was definitely aware that she was having difficulty remembering a family member. I don’t mean just forgetting a name. She has often done that with grandchildren. In this case, when she initially saw Larry she didn’t recognize him and thought he might be her brother, Ken. That suggests that she would probably have difficulty recognizing her brother as well. I had been considering another trip to Texas to see him knowing that could easily be her last trip back home. The experience with Larry encourages me to start making plans for a visit. Time is running out.

Posted on

An Emotional, but Uplifting, End to Our Day

After our visit to Barnes & Noble yesterday, we went directly to dinner and then home. Kate’s bathrobe and extra shoes were still in the car at her feet on the passenger side. As she was getting out of the car, she used her hand signals to ask if she should leave the robe in the car. I told her I thought it would be better to take the robe and the shoes in the house.

Once inside she asked me if she should put on her night clothes. I told her that would be fine, that she could just relax until time for bed. She surprised me by putting on a night gown, something she has not been doing lately.

As usual, I turned on the PBS Newshour that I record each night and took my seat. Meanwhile, Kate picked up her iPad and sat in her chair to work jigsaw puzzles. When the news was over, I decided to put in a DVD with excerpts of her father’s home movies shot between 1932 and the mid-1940s. I had gotten it out to play for Kate a couple of days before, but she asked that I wait until later.

The original movies were filmed in 16 mm color, but, because of their age, the quality of the images had deteriorated significantly over time. One of Kate’s cousins who owned a photo shop in Fort Worth edited the film to make a 35-minute VHS tape when they were the latest way to store images. Then he invited Kate’s mother and father to his house where they were joined by one of Kate’s aunts to view the tape. During the viewing, he used a tape recorder to capture the comments made by these family members watching the movies for the first time in a number of years. Later he created a new video on which he dubbed the audio recording. Two or three years ago, I had that VHS video transferred to a DVD. That is what I played for Kate last night.

The video immediately captured her attention. She dropped the iPad to her side and watched the entire video from beginning to end. She was enraptured with the audio as well as the video. The voices of her mother and father along with her aunt and cousin came through clearly. It was exciting to hear Kate’s reactions. The film begins with her mother and father before they were married, events surrounding their marriage in Michigan, and her mother’s college graduation from TCU. From there it moved to Kate’s grandmother’s home where all the children and grandchildren gathered for lunch every Sunday after church. That was before Kate’s birth, but she saw lots of her cousins playing around the yard outside the family home. Of course, it included her grandmother and her aunts and uncles.

The final portion of the video focuses on Kate’s arrival in 1941 followed by her brother, Ken, in 1943. Although both of us have seen these movies on multiple occasions in the past, it’s been a while. I suspect Kate’s memory of them was very blurred. We both took interest in seeing her as an infant in her parents’ arms, playing in her crib, and playing with Ken and her cousins.

At the end of the video, Kate was in tears of joy. She kept commenting on it. She thanked me profusely for having played it. I can’t ever recall a time when she was so overcome with emotion. It was especially surprising to observe that she didn’t forget having seen the video right away. She sobbed off and on for about 45 minutes. She was still moved when she went to bed. I joined her, and she then did a repeat of the previous night. She talked a long time before going to sleep. She expressed her feelings about our marriage, our children, my getting to know her family before so many of them passed away, and overall how very fortunate we have been.

As much as I also enjoyed seeing the video, the most memorable part of the evening was knowing how much it meant to Kate. Priceless.

Posted on

Trip Report

We returned home just before 7:00 p.m. tonight after spending three nights in Fort Worth. As I have suggested in other posts while we were gone, I am very glad we made the trip. Kate enjoyed seeing her extended family. She didn’t, and still doesn’t, remember most of the names, but she has a strong emotional tie to her family. In recent years, as her short-term memory has faded away, much of her conversation with others has drifted toward family. Most of that has been about her mother but has included her father and her extended family. I didn’t imagine her having another opportunity to share special moments with them. While it is unfortunate that this one was prompted by her cousin Chester’s death, it is in times of loss that family ties seem especially important. In this respect, the weekend could not have been better.

Travel is, however, demanding for Kate, and I must admit something of a challenge for me as well. I envision that it is a combination of these things that will ultimately cause us to curtail it. For Kate, there is a certain amount of pressure or stress in being in strange places and with large numbers of people she doesn’t remember. She made it through Saturday beautifully. At the visitation on Saturday evening, one of her extended family members and I noticed her in conversation with another member of the family. She appeared to be an equal participant in the conversation. I suspect she didn’t know who she was talking with, but I am sure he conveyed either directly or indirectly that he is part of the family. She obviously was quite comfortable with him. This is also true for her with most people, especially if their interaction is brief.

Nonetheless, it requires a lot of effort to “perform” in this way. She has been very tired the past two days. She went to bed around 8:30 Saturday night. I had to wake her up at 10:00 Sunday morning so that we could meet several family members for a lunch to celebrate Kate’s 77th birthday. She didn’t want to get up, but she did. Slowly, but she got up, and we arrived in ample time for her celebration.

I had originally planned to stay in Fort Worth last night. Knowing that it is sometimes difficult for her to get going in the morning, I changed my mind and made reservations in a hotel near the airport in Dallas. That way there would be less rushing to make our flight at 12:15. That turned out to be a wise decision. She was asleep by 8:00 last night, and she slept until 9:00 when I woke her up this morning. Although she would have preferred to stay in bed, she was very cooperative in getting up, and we were able to leave for the airport at 10:00. That gave us time to get something to eat before our flight.

Everything else went smoothly on the way home. We arrived a few minutes early in Atlanta, and our flight from Atlanta to Knoxville was right on time. We stopped by Chalupas to get a bite to eat before coming home. It was almost 7:00 p.m. when we got to the house. I went back to our bedroom around 7:15. Kate was already in bed. She was wearing a robe that was inside-out as happens a good bit. Using hand signals, she asked me to get her a night gown. I brought one to her. She stood up to take off the robe and put the gown on. I started to unpack some things and noticed that she was putting on the robe again, the right way, and had not put on her gown. I mentioned it, and she put the gown on.

That kind of confusion is common, but I believe travel adds an extra measure of confusion because of the unfamiliar surroundings, especially when we are moving from one unfamiliar place to another as people do when they travel. She often asks where we are when we travel. That was different this time. I only recall two times that she asked, “Where are we?” One of those was at dinner at the hotel in Dallas last night. The other was when we got off the plane in Knoxville and were walking to baggage claim. As many times as we have walked through that airport, she didn’t recognize it.

It is impossible for me to understand how stressful travel is for her because she never talks about it. I don’t know how much of this relates to her general preference not to dwell on her Alzheimer’s or if she really doesn’t sense the stress. I believe it is the latter. I think she forgets she has Alzheimer’s except when it comes up at one of her doctor’s appointments. That makes me think that at the very least she doesn’t connect her diagnosis with her experiences.

For me, the most challenging aspect of travel involves airports. That includes going through security. I find myself focusing on getting all the things that need to go through the scanner unloaded and then putting those things back on or in my clothes on the other side. Kate is often confused by the instructions given by the personnel; so I have to watch for that. It is hard enough for me to remember to take everything of mine that has been scanned. Now I have to make sure I have her things as well.

I wish the security check were the most difficult part of travel for me. It is not. It is changing planes in Atlanta that is the challenge. I fear losing her as I did the other day. I can’t tell you how stressful that was. There are so many people and places that it is very hard to find someone.

Another concern is use of the restroom. It takes her a long time in the bathrooms at home, but in an airport there is a substantial challenge. I have already identified family restrooms in the Atlanta airport and may soon try those.

One additional issue with travel is getting from one place to another in a timely fashion. She has only one speed, and it is very slow. At home, I can control much of this because I try to avoid as many specific time commitments as I can. That works pretty well. When we are traveling, you have flight schedules that are not flexible. In addition, when other people are involved, it often involves a set time to meet. This always means planning in advance to make sure we are on time or reasonably close.

When you add up all these things, and I am not beginning to remember the many little things that come up when traveling, I can see why some people stop traveling long before we have. Even with that, I am not ready to call it quits. I still want to make at least one more trip to Texas. If that one is half as successful as the one we just took, I might think about another. My head tells me that it is unlikely that we will do any more airline travel after the next six months, but my head has been wrong before. I hope it will be once again.

Posted on

Kate’s 77th Birthday

Yesterday was Kate’s birthday, and I hadn’t envisioned much of a celebration since we were in Fort Worth for the memorial service and related events surrounding the passing of her cousin, Chester. It turned out, however, that we didn’t have anything scheduled until the family gathered together at 1:30 before the service at 2:00. Kate’s cousin Sharon asked if she could take Kate to lunch as a birthday treat. Together we turned that into a larger gathering to include Kate’s brother, Ken, and his wife, Virginia, as well as our son Kevin’s family. It was a special treat to have another cousin of Kate’s who is from Massachusetts. She hasn’t attended as many family gatherings over the years, and it was nice to visit with her.

Sharon made arrangements for lunch at a restaurant that was close to the church. The lunch turned out to be a perfect way to recognize Kate who hadn’t remembered it was her birthday. Ken and Virginia got us off to a good start by ordering Saganaki, a Greek flaming appetizer. That started the celebration with a little flare, or should I say flame. All of us got out our cameras/phones to capture the flames. That was followed by lots of visiting and good food. It was special for her to share those moments with people who are so special to her. When we got in the car to drive to the church, I said, “Happy Birthday.” Kate said, “Oh, is it my birthday? I didn’t know.”

We met in the Franklin Center of the Methodist church where Kate’s family had been members for so long. Her grandparents’ home had stood on a portion of the property now occupied by the church. The Center has a display of some of the things from the home. Kate loved looking at these things as if for the first time. In her mind it was exactly that.

It was a beautiful service and especially moving for Kate. Family has always been important to her, and Chester was significant for a number of reasons. He had remained in Fort Worth as the rest of the family had made their way to other places. Family was very important to him. We saw him as someone who kept the family memories alive in the place where Kate’s grandparents had made their mark in the early part of the twentieth century. Chester had also been very active in the community in a variety of ways. The church was packed to honor him.

Following the service we spent a little time with Ken and Virginia. Then they went back to their home in San Angelo. We checked into a hotel near the airport for our flight out shortly after noon today. Kate is sleeping soundly. I will probably wake her in another hour or so. I would like to leave for the airport around 10:00. As we leave today, I am feeling good that Kate has had this time with the larger family. That is not something I had thought would happen. She won’t remember it, but each moment meant a lot to her.

 

Posted on

Celebrating the Life of Kate’s Cousin

Our first day back in Fort Worth was a day filled with reunions with family, some we hadn’t seen in many years and a few we had never met. We were brought together to celebrate the life of Kate’s cousin, Chester Hendricks. We attended a private graveside service with family on a cold morning that was offset by the warmth of this family reunion. As someone who came from a very small family, my mother, father, and brother and a few others whom we rarely saw, I’ve always been struck by the emotional ties that bind the Franklin family together. Today’s gathering brought back memories of the early days when I was introduced to the family. By now, of course, those who were the senior generation are no longer with us, and the rest of us have spread to other places.

When we first heard the news of Chester’s passing, I knew this was a time for Kate to be with family. Chester was four years older than Kate, but they had grown up together and shared many family times. Despite the challenges of travel with Kate, yesterday’s experience confirmed that coming back was the right thing to do.

At the graveside service, about half of the family were seated under the canopy while others gathered around the edges. Kate and her cousin, Sharon Billings, took a seat. I started to join them but did not because I didn’t want to disturb the two oldest members of the family who were seated in two chairs I would have had to go through. As the minister made his remarks, I noticed that Kate was wiping tears from her eyes. Sharon reached in her purse for a tissue and then put her arm around Kate. There have only been a few occasions when I have seen Kate cry. She was obviously very moved. I felt a need to be beside her and made my way to her side.

I can never know exactly what she is thinking or feeling. I do know that she can’t remember most of the family who were in attendance or even that we are in Fort Worth. On the other hand, she understands she is with family, and, in that moment, she remembered Chester. While that emotion lasted only for the duration of the service, it was clear that she was saddened. Her tears brought back moments at Christmas when we were in Lubbock with Kevin’s family. She seemed to be experiencing a sense of melancholy as she reflected on the past.

Chester was buried in the family plot. After the service, Kate and I walked around to see the headstones of some of the other family members who are buried there. We lingered over those of her mother and father and an infant daughter who died two years before Kate was born. She didn’t remember the infant daughter’s death. Over the past few years she had talked about that daughter’s passing and that it was something she had not realized as a child. I pointed out the two spaces where our ashes are to be buried.

The family gathered for lunch at one of Chester’s favorite barbeque places. Then we returned to the hotel until 3:45 when we met Kevin and his family at a nearby Panera. We came back to the hotel to meet Ken and Virginia and one of Kate’s cousins, Ethel Longfort. From there we attended Chester’s visitation. There was a much larger crowd than the family we had been with earlier in the day. There were literally hundreds there to pay their respects to Chester who had been very active in business, church, and civic affairs in Fort Worth for all of his adult life. It had been a very good day. I am so glad Kate was able to be here.

Posted on

A Great Day with Family and Close Friends

2017-10-22 (8:05 pm)

Today’s highlight was a family reception following church. We met in the parlor where the family had attended many events over the years. This included wedding receptions for several of us who were in attendance. It was a very informal gathering made special because we don’t get together very often anymore. We took lots of pictures that I am sure we will treasure in the years to come.

We went back to our hotel after the reception. Later in the afternoon, Kate and I visited two friends at a senior facility. One is my former professor with whom I had lunch on Friday. The other is the mother of a good friend who lives in Nashville.

We went directly from this visit to take another friend to dinner. Naomi has meant a lot to us. For years she was a member of Kate’s mother’s Sunday school class. During the late 1990s, after Kate’s mother had suffered a stroke, Naomi served as her caregiver. It meant a lot to Kate to have someone who knew and loved her mother to manage the onsite care that was needed. Even then Kate traveled back and forth between Knoxville and Fort Worth to see her mother and take care of lots of details.

During dinner, we talked about lots of memories. Kate loved it. I think Naomi did as well. It was a perfect close to our reunions with friends in Fort Worth.

 

Posted on

Emotional Moments in Denton

Kate’s cousin, Sharon, picked us up at our hotel for lunch and a couple of stops afterward that provided Kate with some very special emotional moments. First, we went to lunch where we had time for lots of reminiscing about many happy family times. Sharon is only a year or so younger than Kate, and her memory is fully in tack. She remembers with some details stories of individual family members and especially the family Christmas traditions. She told us about the three times that the entire family gathered together in three different homes of family members. They began with the exchange of presents about 10:00 at one house. Everyone dispersed to their own home after that and came back together in the early afternoon for lunch. That was followed by individual family time at their own homes. Then they came back together in the evening for light snacks and desserts leftover from lunch.

As Sharon recounted these family stories, Kate was elated. It was a touching experience for me to see how enthusiastically she listened to them. After lunch, we went back to Sharon’s house. It is filled with many items from her mother and father’s home as well as other special things from the homes of other aunts and uncles. She even has a door that came from Kate’s and Sharon’s grandparents home. It opens out to the deck on the back of the house.

Kate responded tearfully to both the things her cousin showed her as well as the things she told her. As an observer, it was touching to see the way Kate responded. Sharon brought our time together to a close with another special moment. She drove us to the home of her son and his wife to show us the dining room table and chairs that were originally in Kate’s parents’ home. I believe her parents bought them when they moved into their home in 1949. The chairs still had the original fabric on the cushions.

Sharon drove us back to our hotel where Kate rested a while before dinner. This experience is certain to be a highlight of our trip, but we have several other get togethers that I hope Kate will also view as meaningful. One of those is coming up at dinner when we are meeting a couple we have known from Fort Worth and TCU. We should have a lot of memories to discuss.

One final and interesting end to our visit occurred when Sharon dropped us off at our hotel. As we walked away from her car, Kate said, “Now who is she?” I told her that was her cousin, Sharon. This is yet another example of what strange twists can occur with this disease. I am confident that she understood who Sharon is throughout our time with her, but something happened right at the end that caused her to forget.

Posted on

Sad Moment

We’ve had a great time with Kevin over the past few days. We dropped him off at the airport a couple of hours ago. There were several highlights while he was here. One of those was the Knoxville Opera concert on Saturday night. Another was a trip to the zoo yesterday afternoon. We had gone to the zoo in March when Kevin was here with Taylor. Kate had loved it, and I had been looking for a good time to return. It was too hot during most of the summer. The weather cooled off when Kevin came, and I thought it would be worth a try again. It really worked. She was as fascinated with the animals as any child would have been. I will certainly think about another visit to the zoo this fall
After returning from the airport, Kate remained outside. She got a little warm in less than an hour and came inside. It wasn’t long before she came to the kitchen with her iPad and a look of boredom on her face. I said, “You’d like to go someplace.” She nodded. I got my iPad and two cups for drink. We headed for Panera.

As we entered the parking lot, I noticed that she was wearing one brown shoe and one black shoe. I didn’t say anything. Once we were seated, she looked down at her shoes and noticed they didn’t match. She said, “I have one brown and one black shoe.” I told her that would be all right. She looked bothered but didn’t say anything. I watched her for another moment, and she started to cry. I said, “I don’t want you to be bothered. It’s all right.” She pulled herself together, but it was clear to me that it was one of those moments when she realizes that she is changing. It is so sad to watch this. I feel much better when she doesn’t recognize the symptoms.

Posted on

Two More Good Days

Yesterday Kevin arrived for his quarterly visit. We met one of his high school friends and her mother for dinner. Afterwards, we went to a concert sponsored by the Knoxville Opera. It featured music from Porgy and Bess and a number of arias from familiar operas as well as several well-known songs from movies or Broadway shows. The included pieces like “I loves you, Porgy,” “Summertime,” “Somewhere over the Rainbow,” “Nessun Dorma,” and “Old Man River.” The singers were outstanding, and Kate was very enthusiastic.

We got to bed late last night; so we got up a little later this morning. I did get up for my walk. When I returned, Kevin got up, and we talked until Kate was up and ready for Panera. That was close to 10:00 a.m. We had some conversation with friends at a nearby table. It turns out that one of them is the mother of a high school friend of Kevin’s

From Panera, we went to church. Before going into the sanctuary, we stood around and chatted with friends. Kevin chatted with our pastor. Kate leaned over to me and asked me the pastor’s name. I told her, and she said, “I knew that.” We walked into the sanctuary and took a seat in one of the pews down front. As we sat down, Kate said, “Now I know where we are.” I asked her where. She said, “First Pres.” The she chucked softly and said, “I saw it on the sign.” She meant the screen at the front of the church that was scrolling upcoming events. We also spoke after the service with some friends we had not seen in a while. When we said goodbye, Kate asked who they were.

We went to lunch and then came back home for about 20 minutes before leaving to see The Hunchback of Notre Dame at one of our local community theaters. There were several very good singers in the large cast. We came back home where Kate worked in the yard for a while. Kevin and I came inside and talked about choices for dinner. We finally decided to go to a local seafood restaurant near downtown. We had a good meal and came back to the house. I put on a CD of Chris Botti. Kevin read a TCU magazine and Kate worked on her iPad. I joined them for a while. It was a pleasant respite after another good day.

As Kate readied herself to go to the room, she asked if she should connect her iPad to the charger. When I got to the room, she was getting into bed with her clothes on. I asked if she would like me to get a night gown. She said she would. When I got back she had taken her slacks off and asked me if she should put them on her chair beside the bed. I told her that would be fine. She said, “I thought so; I just wanted to be sure.” She is increasingly asking what she should do. In fact, she did just that as we got home from the theater. As she loses touch with more things, she looks to me for guidance to make sure she is doing the right thing. These are always things she would never have asked me about in the past.

This is one visit during which Kevin is bound to see more of the changes that Kate is exhibiting. She seems more childlike and less sensitive to the fact that Kevin will interpret her actions as something related to her diagnosis.

Posted on

Email to Jesse and Kevin

Dear Jesse and Kevin,

I am so glad we were all able to be together for Brian’s graduation. I appreciate the efforts of each of you to make this a special occasion. A year ago, I would not have expected that Mom and I would have been able to make it. I am grateful that I was wrong.

That said, I am sure that both of you could see that life is different for her now. The change is even more dramatic than at the time Kevin and Taylor were here in March. We are now entering the first chapter of what is the portion of this journey that most of us think of when we hear the word Alzheimer’s. Up until now, we have been able to lead what appears to outsiders as a normal lifestyle. (It has been far from normal for us.) We have been very active and have enjoyed ourselves. Mom is now deriving less and less pleasure from things that in the past have provided her a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction. As you know, this doesn’t get better.

Our travel over the past ten days has been hard on her. It has led to her being very tired and confused. I have heard others talk about the challenges of travel, but up until now, those issues have been mostly the burden on me. The burden is now shifting to her without any relief on me. Kevin, I really hated to leave the swim meet the other night, but I was really feeling for Mom. She is very sensitive to the heat. More importantly, she does not know what is going on around her. Not that it would have made any difference but, she wasn’t able to see any of the races themselves. I felt bad that I hadn’t brought her iPad to the meet. She would have been able to entertain herself in that way. Neither did I have it for her at the graduation. Speaking of which, as we left the graduation the other day, Mom said, “Tell me again why we were here for this thing.” She hadn’t realized at all that she had been to Brian’s graduation. I am equally sure that she didn’t even know that it was a graduation.

While we were there, she never completely realized that she was in Lubbock. As we approached our landing on Saturday, I said we’re coming in 25 minutes early. She asked me where we were coming into. When we landed in Knoxville last night, I said, “Well we’re here.” She said, “Where?” I told her Knoxville. She said, “Where we just left?” I told her that was Atlanta.

On the way home, we went to Chalupas for dinner. After we got home, she worked outside for about 30 minutes. This morning that was the first thing she wanted to do. Usually we go to Panera first. She was outside about an hour after which she came in and showered. Then we went to Panera and to lunch. Since our return from lunch, she has been outside. This is one thing that she will be able to continue doing for a while longer. I am thankful for that. She is having more trouble with the iPad. She keeps hitting buttons that take her out of her puzzle, mostly for offers to buy other puzzles. Then she doesn’t know what to do to get back. Though I encourage her to ask me to help her get back to her puzzles, she thinks she is bothering me. When she can no longer use her iPad, she will have lost half of what entertains her now. I hate for that day to come.

Looking ahead, I am still planning to make our trip to Chautauqua in July. That is four weeks from tomorrow. While I don’t think this year’s stay will be like those in the past, I think she will feel comfortable being on the grounds. I think I told you that we bought a bench for the amphitheater that is being reconstructed for this year’s session. Unfortunately, it looks like the benches won’t be ready. That was one of my primary motivations for going this year so that Mom could see where our bench is located. Of course, I need to keep in mind that at this point, things like this don’t mean anything to her. It’s really for me.

The next planned trip is to attend the TCU homecoming in October. I am not at all sure that will happen. It all depends on how Mom is doing. At this point, I don’t think we will make it. If that trip is not possible, that means that the trip to Lubbock for Christmas will be out as well.

As I close, I want to reiterate what you have heard me say so often before, Mom and I have been very fortunate that her decline has been so slow and without any special complications. I continue to treasure not only the memories of our whole marriage but also those since her diagnosis January 21, 2011. One of the few things she said about our trip was how proud she was of both of you and your families. To me, that alone was worth the trip. I know that even now she doesn’t remember the details of the trip or, possibly, that we even took the trip, but the feeling she has for the two of you remains. That’s another thing for which I am grateful.

Love,

Dad