ALZHEIMER'S IN HER OWN WORDS

George Diaz

Eugenia Zukerman is a brilliant woman. She’s a world-class flutist. She was a long-time television correspondent on “CBS Sunday Morning.” But now there’s another chapter in her story.

She is dealing with the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. She is not alone. An estimated 5.8 million Americans 65 or older have Alzheimer’s disease. That number is projected to nearly triple to 14 million people by 2060.

But this is her personal journey, one that she is documenting in a book she has written: “Like Falling Through a Cloud.” It is filled with poems that provide eyeopening insights into the challenges of living with Alzheimer’s disease, which has no cure.

She started her journey of discovery at the urging of her daughters, who noticed she was acting a bit off and asked her to get tested. Then she began writing. Shortly afterward, she had the first 25 pages. It was published in November 2019.

“It just poured out of me, and the response that I have has been so wonderful for everyone, I think, who has Alzheimer’s or this kind of disease,” she said.

“I have to say, people say to me, ‘What’s it like with this unending hardship?’ And I have to say, first of all, I don’t feel it’s a hardship or that it’s unending,” Zukerman, 76, said. “I have a disease, but it’s not painful. It’s not debilitating. It will end when I end. But so far as I know, I’m still pretty cogent.”

The poems are powerful and poignant, reflective of one of the pieces titled “Marbles.”

Maybe mine are lost, or maybe they’re rolling around in my head looking for a place to land, or maybe not. My daughters tell me to get tested. Tested for what, I ask, even though I know for what, but it’s for what I don’t want to know. So I let the marbles roll around in a swirl of distracting colors, because I don’t want to listen to them, the daughters, because if I hear them, I will be very afraid. And this mother cannot be that mother, not ever, never.

As with most Alzheimer’s patients, she is blessed to be surrounded by caregivers—her husband, Richard Novik, and her two daughters Arianna and Natalia. During her Growing Bolder interview, Novik was by her side in case she had any logistical hiccups. He playfully kicked her under the table and suggested she recite another poem.

“I think it’s important for family members, with someone like me, to let that person be who they are,” she said. “Don’t worry about them. Just encourage someone like me to keep doing what they’re doing and be as happy as you can.”

She braces for the future courageously, and with the hope that a recent breakthrough that may help her defense mechanisms of the disease. A drug, called aducanumab, which will go by the brand name Aduhelm, is the first new

Alzheimer’s treatment in 18 years and the first to attack the disease process.

In the meantime, she steps into the uncertainty with confidence.

“I don’t look at my disease with fear,” she said. “It doesn’t hurt. There is no physical pain. What hurts is the knowledge that my life on this planet will not be as long as I would like it to be. But that knowledge makes me even more positive. I do wake up in the morning with an excitement that a new day has dawned. I can’t wait to explore it, to devour it, to enjoy it. My life is blessed with joy.”

FROM THE GB BOOKSTORE:

Read Eugenia Zuckerman’s beautiful and lyrical memoir, Like Falling Through a Cloud.

GROWINGBOLDER.COM/BOOKSTORE

Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine.

–Anthony J. D’Angelo

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