your voice | an essay
Lead the Way by Darlene Buechel
A
pproximately 83,000 people die from Alzheimer’s disease every year.
On Oct. 19, 2018 my dad, Gene Totzke, became a part of that horrible statistic when he passed away at age 85. According to the 2019 Alzheimer’s Association fact sheet, one in three senior citizens dies with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) or another form of dementia. I was shocked to learn that AD kills more than prostate and breast cancer combined. We often hear people say, “Just a minute,” when we want their attention, but have you ever thought of what can be accomplished in a mere minute? I found an internet site which lists 40 things you can do in a minute including make your bed, trim your toe nails, and floss your teeth. Sadly, the Alzheimer’s Association lists something else that happens in just over a minute. Every 65 seconds someone in the U.S. develops AD! To say that Alzheimer’s is becoming an epidemic is no exaggeration. Between 2000 and 2017 deaths from heart disease have decreased 9 percent, but deaths from AD have increased 145 percent. These days AD is the sixth leading cause of death in the U.S. and 5.8 million Americans are living with the disease. Put in prospective, that 5.8 million is more than the population of Chicago and Houston combined! According to the Alzheimer’s Association, by 2050 the number of Americans living with AD is projected to rise to nearly 14 million. If you don’t have AD or dementia yourself, chances are you know a family member, friend, or neighbor who is living or dying with the disease.
The “Totzke Trotters” walked to raise money for the fight against Alzheimer’s Disease. President Ronald Reagan’s daughter, Patti Davis, wrote a book about losing her father to Alzheimer’s. In “The Long Goodbye” Davis describes saying goodbye in stages. “Alzheimer’s,” she wrote, “snips away at the threads, a slow unraveling, a steady retreat; as a witness all you can do is watch, cry, and whisper a soft stream of goodbyes.” Everyone has a different journey, but I found that the truly heartbreaking thing about loving a person with memory loss is that you lose them long before they take their last breath. After Dad’s death, my sister Diane and I had many conversations about grief and the grieving process. Most people are familiar with the seven stages of grief defined by Dr. Kubler-Ross: shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing, and acceptance. Some say the process of grief can take anywhere from six months
to four years, but Diane and I both felt we went through most of the stages before Dad died—during the more than four years he suffered with Alzheimer’s. I grieved when Dad stopped greeting me by name. I grieved during our Monday Skipbo games at the assisted living center when Dad no longer knew the rules of a game he’d played with Mom for over 40 years. I grieved when Dad spoke of long dead friends as if they were still with us. I also grieved when Dad’s temperament changed and he didn’t love music anymore. The summer before Dad died a poem “wrote itself” during one of my walks down our quiet, country road. I wanted it read at Dad’s memorial service but I knew I wouldn’t be able to choke my way through it. Thankfully, daughter Danielle did the honors for me. My poem, “I Remember,” talked about my memories with Dad and music, Dad and camping, FALL 2020|
31
