It appears that this thread has enough "vigah" (a la JFK) on its own to withstand highjacking by a bit of sidebar sharing... '-)
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My mother also was the last person my father recognized -- and she did "light up his life" right up to the very end.
I shared that experience of having my Dad fail to recognize me and saying, "My son is a little boy about this (waist) high"...
And, yes, I will be forever grateful that we did not inflict the reality of my mother's passing on my father's final months...
My dad was a brilliant man; I describe watching his decline as,
"Like watching the lights in a great city gradually wink out -- one by one..."
Alzheimers is, indeed, a cruel affliction. Thank you for sharing your experiences with its victims!
Alzheimers is, indeed, a cruel affliction
For sure. Was so with my mother.
BTW:
A MORE EXCELLENT WAY
by Henry Wright documents amazing success dealing with it The Lord’s way.
Thanks for your very kind remarks...that was very poetic, very sad, and yet so very beautiful, how you described your dad’s slow mental decline..you have faithfully described the course that Alzheimers takes....
We gad two gentlemen on the Alzheimers wing, who had been engineers during their working years...men with busy minds, that needed stimulation....we find a great solution...
We found a working engineer, a friend of some staff member, and he designed and constructed a number of what I can describe as ‘workboards’, for these two gentlemen....they were made out of thick wood, and had screws, and bolts and nuts, and wrenches, and all sorts of tools on it, and there seemed to be some inherent problem in the way he set it up, for an engineer to figure out...it was fun to watch these two gentlemen, sitting at a table pouring over the problem, trying this, trying that, discussing the problem with each other, as best as they could...they would spend hours pouring over those workboards, and felt as if they had really accomplished something for the day...when they felt they had solved the problem, and were bored with the current workboard, the engineer working on the outside would bring in a new one...
Trying to custom fit activities for each Alzheimers patient, which arouses their interest, and keeps them busy and happy, can be a difficult chore, but when you hit upon the right thing for them, it is a true blessing...some Alzheimers wings I have visited, in trying to gain more knowledge into this area, have proved worthwhile endeavors...one nursing home, had a whole kitchen right on the Alzheimers wing, so that the ladies could cook, under close supervision...they loved it...and they also had a sewing circle, where they were under close supervision...so that even many of these Alzheimers, patients were in a nursing home, depending on the nursing home, they could continue those activities in the nursing home, which gave them pleasure in better times...
We had one gentleman, who showed little interest in anything much....he just seemed to like to walk around....ah, but then we realized what gave him great pleasure....he was walking around but he was listening carefully to what other people were saying....and then he would come up to them, and critique their grammar...for you see, he had been an English Professor, at a large university....so each time I would care for him, I would make sure to make some grammatical blunder, sometimes obvious, sometimes not so obvious, to see if he caught it....most of the time he did, and he quite delighted in correcting my grammar...sometimes, I would try not to make any grammatical blunders and he would compliment me...that is what seemed to give him the greatest pleasure, listening, to someone else’s grammar, and then critiquing it or praising it...