Posted on 09/28/2002 10:53:56 PM PDT by MadIvan
HE was a key figure in ripping down the iron curtain and ending the cold war, which brought the 20th century to a close with America as the only superpower. Yet Ronald Reagan’s horizons have shrunk to his bedside as Alzheimer’s disease ravages his mind.
Michael Reagan, his elder son, believes that death would be a merciful release for the former American president.
“It’s time for him to go. It’s very sad,” he said in an interview. “I’m going to hate the day Dad dies. You think you are ready for it, but you never are. But I sometimes pray that if God wants to take him home, then take him home.”
Reagan, 91, sleeps on and off for 18 hours a day, according to his son. He was always a sound sleeper, even when his policies were under attack in the 1980s.
His waking hours are a nightmare of befuddlement.
Reagan fell in the bedroom of his Bel Air home in California in January 2001, broke a hip and has been bedridden ever since. He is fed, washed and cared for 24 hours a day by medical staff, but can neither leave his bed, even for the most basic functions, nor make himself understood.
“Some days are better than others but they are all sad days. You see a man who is referred to as the Great Communicator and he can’t communicate because he doesn’t know who he is. He talks gibberish,” said his son.
Reagan does not know that his daughter Maureen died last August of melanoma at the age of 60. On the day of her funeral he stayed at home. “You wouldn’t have wanted to tell him,” said Michael. “Even if he could comprehend, he would have no way of expressing his feelings.”
Michael, 57, was adopted as a baby by Reagan and his first wife, the actress Jane Wyman. According to family legend three-year-old Maureen was in a Hollywood chemist’s when the pharmacist asked what she wanted. She put 97 cents on the counter and said: “I want a baby brother.” Her birth had been difficult, so the family chose to adopt.Today Reagan’s son is a radio chat show host in California who buried some of his family demons with an autobiography more than a decade ago. The children had many run-ins with their emotionally distant father but Michael now visits him once a month. “He doesn’t know me, but I go there for Nancy, to show up. I hug and kiss him,” he said.
“In some ways I go there out of guilt. We’re not like every family — I was at boarding school from the age of five, so I’m seeing him more than I used to. It’s the way our family works, by appointment — it’s always been by appointment.”
Nancy, who was 81 in July, still looks at Reagan adoringly, said Michael. She wants others to remember him the way he was but even she confessed last week that she was lonely. She was not sure that her husband knew her any more and said: “When you come right down to it, you’re in it alone and there’s nothing anybody can do for you.”
The strain is beginning to tell on her. “She’s frail,” said Michael. “She’s much frailer than she would have been because of Dad’s illness. She’s a professional worrier. She’s always carried a burden of some sort. She worries about what people are saying about Dad, about his place in history.
“I worry that when Dad goes Nancy won’t be far behind because she lives and breathes for Dad.” She need have no fear about history’s verdict on Reagan, whose virtues are frequently invoked in this post-September 11 world.
“George W is closer to my father’s ideology than he is to his father’s,” said Michael, who believes that the September 11 attacks would not have happened under Reagan. “He responded to the Muammar Gadaffis. They knew where he stood.” Despite backing Bush, he thinks his father would have disapproved of the “giant conversation” under way over Iraq.
Libya was bombed in 1986 after a terrorist attack on Americans in West Berlin. “Dad didn’t hold a press conference saying what we’ll do with Gadaffi. He just did it,” said Michael.
Reagan’s descent into Alzheimer’s was remarkably rapid after he left the White House in 1989 and soon became impossible to conceal.
Michael said Reagan’s great ally, Margaret Thatcher, was guest of honour at a birthday party for him in 1993.
“Dad gave Maggie a great introduction, as he always did, and she got a standing ovation. Then the applause stopped and Dad reintroduced her. Everybody stood up and applauded again as if nothing had happened.
“After that Nancy and Dad felt it was time to start thinking about getting the word out about Alzheimer’s.”
In 1994 Reagan published a touching letter about his plight in which he said: “I only wish I could spare Nancy from the painful experience.”
He could not. By 1997 he was still active — some golf, walking on the beach — but his mind was faltering. He would spend hours sweeping leaves from the swimming pool and his secret servicemen would quietly put them back, simply to keep him occupied.
Every now and then he would show a flash of insight, his son recalled. “My daughter Ashley hugged him and said, ‘Grandpa, I love you.’ He looked directly at me and said in a full voice, ‘You know why I’m hugging her? Because she’s a she.’ ” He’d remembered how Michael had complained about his lack of hugs as a child.
Now Michael understands that Reagan was a typical post-war father. At the time, however, the children were often unforgiving and even today the family is politically divided.
At the launch of the battleship USS Ronald Reagan last year, Nancy’s children Patti Davis and Ron Reagan stayed away. “They’re the 1960s generation, the liberals. To them the ship was a killing machine,” said Michael. “I felt sorry for Nancy that day. She fought hard to have the ship commissioned before my father died. It had never been done in anybody’s lifetime before, so it was an honour. I was there with my wife and children. George W Bush was there.
“Nancy and I have not always had the greatest of relationships and I began to wonder if the problem was not that she’s so angry with me but that she’s jealous that the Wyman kids — Maureen and I — would show up no matter what was going on in the family.”
Maureen was Nancy’s chief support until she succumbed to her own illness. In the past year Patti has grown closer to her mother and believes the reconciliation makes her father happy. Nancy said last week: “She thinks he has a feeling of the two of us together. As she says, his soul doesn’t have Alzheimer’s.”
Michael is grateful. “When Maureen passed away, Patti stepped up and she’s there with her mother all the time. It’s been good for Nancy and it’s great for Patti. She’s finally getting close to Dad.”
Maureen sacrificed her own health, Michael believes, by campaigning non-stop for an Alzheimer’s cure instead of fighting her cancer.The time is nearing when Reagan will join her. “Maureen has been waiting for him for a year and has probably got a good spot for him beside her. She’d love it. No brothers, no sisters, no moms. Just her and Dad.” For Michael, it is a consoling thought.
Thank God that did not happen. The Stain-Maker biting his lip over the casket of Reagan would have been too nauseating to bear.
I can't put it any better. Regan's legacy is the end of the cold war. Clinton's legacy is a BJ in The Oval office. Kennedy's legacy is The Bay Of Pigs and a string of sexual affairs largely ignored by "The Press".
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.