Evans “Buddy” King
My wife passed away several weeks ago after a 10 year struggle with Early Onset Alzheimer’s and Lewy body dementia, after a three year, four month and eight day stay in a nursing home.
While on this tragic path, she went from a lovely and laughing and elegant and athletic lady to a quadriplegic, bedfast the last three plus years, seemingly beyond comprehending and beyond feeling.
There is bitter irony in the loss of a loved one to dementia. It is a cruel and unfair death. The survivors are left with memories, but by death the victim is totally devoid of memory, in J’s case probably not even aware of who she herself was, much less of those she had loved and enjoyed and embraced during her lifetime.
I was constantly assured by J’s doctors that she was in a blissful state the last several years, not suffering the frustration and pain that the survivors were. I am willing to accept that diagnosis, it was comforting, but who knows for sure?
I saw the occasional tear, however, and it was more than I could bear. When her son told her that his wife was pregnant with their first child, on her last Mother’s day, she laughed and smiled, something we had not seen in months. A forever memory.
After J’s passing, well meaning people frequently said to me that “now you have closure.”
Closure. Nice word, something I myself often said these last several years was lacking, something that family and friends of long-term dementia patients don’t have.
Alzheimer’s is death by a thousand cuts, it’s a day after day, week after week death bed vigil.
Closure is good in one sense. I am comforted to know that J is no longer merely existing, trapped in her body and void of the essence of what she had been.
And I am glad that she no longer suffers, that she no longer has to be fed and cleaned and clothed by others.
Of all the people I have known in my life, my wife would have resented and resisted the loss of dignity the most. This is what my friends have meant by saying that I have “closure.” An end to a battle that offered no hope of victory.
But “closure” also implies an end of “thinking about,” of connecting, of feeling and caring.
It suggests “moving on,” forgetting, closing one chapter and opening the next. Is that what we want or think we need when someone at the core of our lives dies?
When the love of your life is gone? Are we that callous that we really expect “closure?”
One of J’s favorite lines was “life is for the living.” She certainly lived in the moment herself, relishing and enjoying the good times, suffering and commiserating with others through the bad, feeling and laughing, remembering the past but not dwelling.
A good example, sound theology, unless and until the loss is too great. I will remember her advice, but I will also avoid the temptation to resist wishing for what I had, for what could still be.
There will be no closure for me. Life will go on. I will have good times and bad. But I will not close the book of my life with J.
It’s a book I want to cherish, a book I want to remember every line of, a book to take off the shelf, from time to time, and never allow to get dusty.
Evans “Buddy” King grew up in Christiansburg and graduated from CHS in 1971. He lives in Clarksburg, West Virginia, where he practices law with the firm of Steptoe and Johnson PLLC. He can be reached at Evans.King@steptoe-johnson.com.
