The coverage of Sandra Day O'Connor's husband (he has Alzheimer's, he's forgotten her, he's formed a romantic relationship with a fellow patient at his facility, Justice O'Connor supports him) has been, by and large, sympathetic. This is a good thing.
All the same, I can't help agreeing with Angela at Reformed Chicks Blabbing, who writes:
I just find it to be heart wrenchingly sad that after decades of marriage a wife has to see that. AD is indeed one of the most tragic of diseases, and there is no prettying it up, no "making nice." And why do we need to? Why do we need to put on a perky "everybody's happy" face about something so obviously absurd and just plain lamentable?
Yes. On the one hand there's something fundamentally whole and sound about Justice O'Connor's reaction, and that should be noted. On the other hand, many of the people who are commenting are in an all-out hurry to get to the warm-fuzzy-triumph-of-love aspects of the story -- a lovely inspirational cable-news sort of narrative-- and in the process blow right by some of the other dimensions. Such as, for example, the naked-staring-into-they-abyss aspects. I'm sure that Justice O'Connor is doing the right thing, and a difficult thing. And I seriously doubt that she's feeling the least bit pleasant or glowing about it. Pure unfiltered horror would be more like it. Or, less dramatically, just the plain realization -- things were once one way and now they're another, and this is how they are. Which is not at all how I'd like them to be. And how I'd like them to be matters not in the least.
There's no shortage of people who talk to you about your Alzheimer's situation and want to tell you how spiritual it's making you, or how spiritual it made them. A sort-of-friend recently e-mailed me that caring for her grandmother-with-Alzheimer's was a wonderful experience, and she would have kept her in her home if she could. Very nice. Please note that the wonderful experience was hers, not her grandmother's. And she was a grandchild, not a child, so the implied condemnation of the decision to put grandma in a home wears a little thin, doesn't it? Because if you're the child and a caregiver, it's a whole different reality, isn't it.
I don't deny that there's a spiritual aspect to Alzheimer's. I say that as an incipient Zen practitioner who thinks that spirituality involves staring hard at facts on the ground, and not trying to turn them into nice upholstered concepts of how things should be. And certainly not trying to turn them into a kind of emotional consumerism -- Alzheimer's is spiritual because it lets me feel all nice about myself. No, sorry. If Alzheimer's is spiritual, that's because it brings you up against the central questions -- what's your essential identity and what isn't, what can you give up and what can't you, who are you really and what if anything does it mean. Spiritual but not happy-making, not in the least.
So talk to me about Alzheimer's and spirituality. But spare me the inspiration. And spare me your personal needs and how you got self-actualized through the experience, or what have you.
Better yet, don't talk to me about Alzheimer's and spirituality. Just show up and help. And bring the bucket and mop.
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