Posted on

“Little Things Mean A Lot”

In 1954, Kitty Kallen‘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.

Kate and I have lived well throughout our marriage. In fact, I’d 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. 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 also in cities within a two-hour drive.

Travel also played an important role in our lives. We went on a safari in Tanzania, where we got a close look at lions, elephants, zebras, and other wild animals 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 Kate 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 downstairs for ice cream at 3:30 and having dinner at 4:30.

In addition, we have great times when we are alone. Sometimes that happens in the morning when she 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 it, 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”. My perspective has changed significantly since I first heard that song.

Posted on

Improving at Stage 7 Alzheimer’s. Can it be?

2

Like many other people, I’ve often thought the progression of Alzheimer’s involves the loss of one ability after another, and there is truth to that. Fifteen years ago, Kate was driving, active on her computer, and tending to her plants at our house for hours each day. Today, she can’t walk, bathe, dress herself, or talk in a way that we can understand.

What is amazing is that she has improved in important ways over the past two to three years. She is happier now and although mornings are her most difficult time of the day, she often awakes in a cheerful mood.

I frequently talk about her “Happy Moments”. These are moments when she is cheerful and often accompanies that by talking. I use the term “moments” because her mood comes and goes throughout the day. She shifts between Happy Moments and what I call “Neutral Moments”. That is the way she is much of the time; however, during the past week, she has experienced more Happy Moments than usual.

One of those occurred on Labor Day morning. She was smiling when I first noticed that she was awake. After giving her morning medications, she began to talk. I got into bed with her to take advantage of the moment. She said, “It’s good to see you.” That may not seem special, but it is for someone who doesn’t speak at all most of the time, and when she does, you can’t understand her.

She continued to be cheerful off and on throughout the entire day. We went for ice cream that afternoon. As I was about to put the ice cream on the table, she said, “That’s mine.” It was Labor Day, and a few minutes later, I said, “It’s so quiet today. They don’t have many activities going on.” Kate immediately gave a startled look that meant “Really?” Responses like this let us know that she follows and understands much of what I and others say.

Moments like these make it clear to me that all is not lost with Alzheimer’s, not even during the late stages. She is still able to connect with people, and it appears that she enjoys it. I think there are a number of reasons for her improvement. I’ll save that for another post, but I hope that our experience might be encouraging to other families with a loved one who has dementia. I am sure that Kate isn’t the only one who could improve at this point in the disease.

Posted on

My Favorite Part of the Day

I’ve often noted that mornings are the most challenging part of the day for Kate. That is a time when she smiles and talks less than she does later in the day. Although that continues to be the case, she does smile and talk a little more in the morning than she has in years.

Having said this, the late afternoon and evening remain the times she is more comfortable and at ease, which leads to more smiling and talking. My favorite time of the day is after the caregiver leaves at 7:00. Our primary responsibilities are over, and we can relax together.

Not always, but very often, we spend our time talking while watching music videos on YouTube . It is our conversations that I enjoy the most. They are quite different from our pre-Alzheimer’s conversations. The disease and especially the loss of normal speech make it difficult to understand what she is saying.

What is important to me is that she is relaxed. She is eager to talk. She is happy. She is also more comfortable talking with me than most people she encounters during the day. That tells me that our relationship is still special for her, just as it is for me, and that means the world to me.

Posted on

My Best Source of Stress Relief

Because there are greater demands placed on me during this late stage of Kate’s Alzheimer’s, I experience more stress now than at earlier stages. The good news is that Kate is my greatest source of stress relief. I cannot say enough good things about her.

She is happy. That isn’t obvious every moment of the day, but she displays her happiness numerous times daily with her smile. She often smiles in her sleep. Sometimes she talks when she is apparently dreaming. These conversations (at least her part) are usually cheerful, and she sometimes laughs during them.

Our conversations are most important to me. They occur mostly in the evening after the caregiver leaves, but we also have them at other times of the day. These two occurred after I returned home from lunch on Saturday afternoon.

Posted on

Our Anniversary Celebration

To celebrate our anniversary last night, I arranged for a wheelchair-accessible van and took Kate out to dinner at a restaurant where we had shared many special moments since the early seventies.

Alzheimer’s makes it impossible to predict how she will respond in situations like that, but she rose to the occasion. Her best times are in the late afternoon, and she was smiling before we left. She was cheerful throughout the dinner and after returning home.

Her most difficult times are in the morning, but lately she has been waking up with a big smile. That happened this morning. It looks like another nice day for us. I wish the same for you.  

Posted on

Our 62nd Anniversary

Happy Anniversary to my wife, Kate. After all of these years, I can’t imagine finding a better match. Our marriage has been the adventure of a lifetime. It really began shortly after our first date on December 19, 1961, when I was in need of money and took a job as an ambulance driver at a funeral home.

Our whole courtship centered around my responsibilities at the funeral home. I worked four nights a week, which handicapped my time for dating. On slow nights, I invited her to the funeral home where we spent the evening in one of the unoccupied viewing rooms.

Periodically, I had to go out of town to pick up a body. She would go with me, and I was on the company expense account. We always found a good steakhouse before picking up the body and driving back home.

At the time, neither of us thought much about this. We were in love, and that was all that mattered. Of course, the most challenging adventure of all has been “Living with Alzheimer’s”. Thankfully, we have lived joyfully despite those challenges. Our love for each other has been a powerful source of strength for both of us, and I am optimistic that our love will sustain us for the remainder of our journey together.

Posted on

Our Relationship at Stage 7 Alzheimer’s

Our lives have changed significantly since Kate’s diagnosis fourteen years ago. Our world was much larger then. Now, it’s very small. Over time, she has lost almost all of the abilities she used to have.

For the past four and a half years, she has required total care. Her caregivers and I get her in and out of bed with a lift. We bathe her. We dress her. We feed her.

For ten years, we binged on movies, musical and theatrical performances, and ate out for all of our noon and evening meals. Today, the big events of our day are going for ice cream at 3:30 and having dinner at 4:30. We get her to bed at 6:30 p.m just before the caregiver leaves.

These changes have had a dramatic effect on our relationship. More often than not, she doesn’t seem to know who I am in the morning. That is balanced by other moments during the day and evening when she expresses her feelings for me in various ways. Since she has aphasia, she depends heavily on her facial expressions to communicate those feelings.

She often gives me a smile that I am confident communicates her love. That occurs most often when I return home from lunch and meetings with friends or organizations with which I am a member.

My favorite part of the day is our evenings after the caregiver leaves. We watch music videos on YouTube, and I recount many of the things we have done together during our marriage. We hold hands. She strokes my arm. She rarely says, “I love you”, but sometimes she takes my hand and lifts it to her lips and kisses it several times.

Sometimes she is talkative. One night last week, we talked for almost an hour. I love these conversations. Even though I only understand a few words sprinkled among the gibberish, the conversations seem very natural, and it is clear that love still binds us together. I am grateful.

Posted on

One Fine Day

I often mention the “Happy Moments” that Kate and I share. I chose that expression to convey that these are not continuous experiences; however, we are fortunate that they occur every day. Some days we have more happy moments than other days. Once in a while, we have a day filled with them. We had one of those the other day.

Kate began the day in a cheerful mood. She smiled, and she talked. It was one of those mornings when I got in bed with her, and we talked with music playing in the background. I love moments like this because they seem like we are connecting the way we did before Alzheimer’s, even though she can’t recall past events or speak in a way that I can understand.                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Later, she talked and laughed as the caregiver and I got her ready for the day. That’s saying a lot because she doesn’t like being rolled to one side and then the other in order to get her dressed.

She remained in this mood for the balance of the day until we turned the lights out that night.

Like so many things, I can’t explain what brought this about. I only know that it was “One Fine Day”. The days since then haven’t been quite the same, but they have been days of more Happy Moments than usual. Moments like this won’t last forever, but we will enjoy and cherish them whenever they occur.

Posted on

Nighttime Conversations

Kate has never been a morning person. That has never been truer than during the middle and late stages of her Alzheimer’s. She rarely speaks in the morning. Sometimes cheerfulness and speech make their first appearance in mid-afternoon, often as we have ice cream shortly after 3:30. Sometimes it doesn’t happen until dinner, or even later.

For me, our evenings together are among the best times of the day. We watch music videos on YouTube and talk. I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s hard for me to adequately express in words. Last night, I took a few videos and attached them to a post on Facebook.

I like to think that Kate would forgive me for letting the public in on private moments like this when she is in bed in her bed clothes and her hair messed up. Despite this, I believe it’s a beautiful example of how happy she is and why this is my favorite part of the day. She still captures my heart as we approach our 62nd anniversary. Not even Alzheimer’s has been able to take this away from us.

Posted on

More Happy Moments

Kate continues to experience more “Happy Moments” than she did 3-4 years ago. That has been especially true during the past couple of weeks. I often say that I can never predict how she will feel. She can be happy at one moment and withdrawn the next; however, I have come to expect her to be more at ease after 3:00 in the afternoon and often until she goes to sleep at night. That had not been so predictable since her stroke three years ago.

After the caregiver left last night, she and I experienced a Happy Moment that I would call very romantic. I was beside her in bed with my head on her shoulder. We watched a DVD of the 2025 anniversary concert of Les Miserables, our favorite musical.

Touch is more important to her now than at earlier stages, perhaps because she has aphasia. As we enjoyed the music, I put one hand across her stomach, and she put her hand on my hand. In a few moments, she began to stroke my hand gently. As I often do, I talked with her about some of the special times we had had in the past. She didn’t say much, but she was able to communicate her affection with beautiful smiles as I talked. This lasted for about an hour until the concert was over, and we called it an evening.

Her Alzheimer’s, her hospitalization with Covid, and her stroke made this romantic evening different than it might have been in years past, but there was a connection between us that made this particular moment as romantic as any we have ever experienced. We have lost much since her diagnosis fourteen years ago, but we still enjoy life and each other.