His Wife Enters Memory Care

Michael Sedano

"Yesterday,Today. Today, Tomorrow."

“It’s been fun,” she said and I smiled at the sardonic humor. That was the old Barbara talking, wise-cracking in the sobering face of tragedy. What she meant was, on Thursday, Barbara moves into  Memory Care and for the second time in our lives together we're going to be torn asunder.

The first time we were forcibly separated I had to go live at Ft. Ord. Barbara refused to allow it, and when advanced training started, Barbara packed up kit and caboodle and moved into a farmworker shack outside the gates of Ft. Ord. I went AWOL every night of my advanced training because Barbara refused to allow us to stay separated.

I began La Bloga's 2019 with a Tuesday column on Memory (link), fearing that today's column was steamrolling toward me like an out-of-control 16-wheeler on a greased downhill run and that guy was sitting up there watching it coming on our first New Year's Day together. 

In the fifty years since I returned from Korea to home with Barbara, our separations lasted at most two weeks at a stretch. I was travelling for work at lot, but when I returned home, life resumed its responsibilities of building more memories and we did that well. We accumulated stuff. Barbara threw parties at the drop of a hat! People had their weddings at our pad. We filled the yard and house with gente food fun memories, que no? We never were alone and we are not alone now, that's for sure my friends.

This is intimate stuff, I know. People fear Alzheimer’s with good reason. An ironic fear because once you’re living with Alzheimer’s you are dispossessed of Reason. And short term memory, and things like my name and identity. She’ll respond to something I say with “Michael says that all the time,” and look at me as if I’m some well-meaning nameless person. It hurts, but it is what it is. I’m not me to her. The person speaking is no longer my Barbara. It makes love grow stronger, pain.

Barbara has memory, she knows stuff. She remembers her friends from when she was Chair of the Department; they visit and call. They hold warm memories of Barbara’s friendship and love over her teaching career. But near-term memories jumble and immediate experience evaporates. She doesn’t remember but senses a foreboding. She asks repeatedly what day today is. Then she asks, when am I moving? Why are you getting rid of me? I don’t know why I can’t stay here? I am going to beat this, she pledges.

Barbara Sedano watches her first graduating seniors, San Gabriel High School, 1971

Her bargaining gives me hopefulness, but not hope. There’s a personality operating in the shadows. She was powerful, that woman whose reflections rise up to argue against inevitability. That’s Barbara in there, the fighter not giving in, looking for a way out. She knows it must be this way. 

When she says, on her bad days, “I want to go home,” I know she means her brain is screaming for life as it used to be, herself as she used to be. We live here. "Not here, Home." She wants to go home a lot. There are good days.

The hippocampus is the first to go, a clinician told me once. What a cruel disease, dementia. Our entire family has been crushed by the existence of Alzheimer’s among us. I saw our condition as my new career, I dedicated myself to caring for Barbara’s needs with the single-minded intensity I used to assume, when I took on work projects. I revived the “Type A Personality” me. And it broke me. I failed in lots of ways and the disease itself won’t back down.

That’s why I explain to Barbara, I’m not sending you away. I can no longer take care of you the way you deserve, the way you need, the way the family deserves. And she says it’s her fault.

This evil disease will extinguish those vestiges of my Barbara as more and more she is present and in the moment, and only that. Much of her passing hours she sits motionlessly, body at rest. I sit in the room, watch, wondering what battles rage in the synaptic universe that populates her beautiful mind? Our lifetime together resides in there for her and it can’t get out here into the light. Dementia chips away at chips away at chips away at her Self. Each blow rings with finality, taking a little more until the spark in her eye will refuse to shine for me.

One of those "happiest ever" days, daughter's wedding.

So we’ve dedicated this week to doing stuff for the last time. We don't talk about it, and maybe it's just me being emotional. But it's purposive.

This is similar to the first time we were separated. The day before I reported to the Army, Barbara and I took a rowboat off the Santa Barbara coast so I could view the Continent I was leaving. I planned on coming back.

Today will be the last time we cruised by King Taco; last time we sat at Jones Coffee for her hot chocolate and a treat. We'll go grocery shopping one last time; I’ll buy food as if there’s a tomorrow. 

Wednesday we're having lunch with the first couple we dined with after I returned from the Army. We didn't plan our last social lunch this way, but it comes around like it that.

I’ll cook Wednesday night’s dinner as if she’ll have leftovers for Thursday’s lunch. Maybe Thursday she’ll eat those leftovers for our final lunch at home. I love cooking for my wife. I'll take her stuff in Memory Care.

Thursday night, Barbara has dinner in Memory Care. I’ll kiss her goodbye instead of goodnight. I'll leave her there, come home, and sleep alone. I'll go visit Friday morning.

Barbara at 5, 70 years ago. P'alla va la sombra.

51 years ago this August, I promised to love, honor, cherish, in sickness in health, all the days of our lives and I’ve done my darnedest to live up to that promise I made in front of my familia.

I can’t do it myself anymore. I’m beaten. This Memory Care operated by a large medical corporation is how I am keeping that promise from now on. We almost made it to 51, together.

I tell myself I didn’t fail, I coulda done better, for sure I shoulda done it differently. I apologized to Barbara that I could not help her when she needed me the most. But I didn’t fail. Alzheimer's cannot be beaten. Yet. I volunteered for a study of healthy brains (link). My brain will inform researchers in studies designed to predict Alzheimer's. Maybe someone will figure out how to fix broken brains from what someone sees in my brain under a microscope. A ver.

So off Barbara goes on Thursday. One more separation in our life of belonging together. She’s in walking distance and I’ll visit a lot. I hope Barbara’s around when I get there. Our life together, it’s been fun, Barbara. Thank you.

A couple years ago as the disease onset struck us with finality, I asked Barbara what she wanted people to remember of her. She answered instantly she was Charlotte's grandmother and Amelia's mother, and after that, she was an English teacher.

Dear Mrs. Sedano,
I have thought about you often through the years & even shared stories about you with my own students & family. My name is Natalie Chavez (Contreras now) and I was one of your Journalism students back in 1985 at Alhambra High. You are the whole reason I came out of my shell and started having confidence. You helped get me involved in high school & changed my whole direction. Now every time I come across a shy kid like me, I think of you! Thank you! My love has always been writing, but I chose to make a difference, like you did, and I teach. (smile) I really do hope you get this (or your family) because I want you to know, I’ll never forget you! God bless you. Love, Natalie & Family.

That’s my Barbara, gente. Don’t forget her.