Our Sunday morning ritual revolves around CBS Sunday Morning. We love the arts, the commentary, the human focus of the stories. This week, they re-aired Barry Peterson's story about his wife's early-onset Alzheimer's disease.
I've seen the piece three times and bawl every time.
The story is about love and how the disease manages to dissolve their dreams, one tiny pixel at a time. Peterson does such a good job showing how he and Jan were everything to each other until, without meaning to, she left. The disease floated her out of their intimacy into a cloud bank of confusion.
How much of marriage is being able to finish each other's sentences? Knowing how to feed joy to your spouse? Retelling your favorite stories to swell the present with the sweetness of the past? Being a counterweight to your husband or wife's struggles?
If we could, we would hang sandbags, lower anchors, anything to keep them here with us, but no one can counterweight a person's evaporation, especially not the loved one left behind. In the story, Peterson shares a friend's perspective that every visit is another funeral.
Which is why I haven't read the book, Jan's Story. Jack has done an amazing job of teaching me that fear deserves no more attention than a kick in the teeth, but still. Some things eat me alive inside and this is one. Statistics show that Alzheimer's is on the rise and when your husband has 28 years of aging on you, fear has a leg up.
We all know that when you focus on what you fear you head right for it, which is why I don't mind seeing the story for the third time. I need frequent reminding; the lesson Jan taught him, Peterson says, is to soak up every day and be very grateful for the glory that is the present. Maybe if I learn that lesson fast enough I can diffuse the fear, let go of the future and trust it, too, will be glorious and full of love.
Jan and Jack are both right. Kick away from the dock of fear and water ski over that jump. That's how we do it, right? How we get those stories?
Yes, dear, I said you are right. So when do we do we get to go water skiing?
I've seen the piece three times and bawl every time.
The story is about love and how the disease manages to dissolve their dreams, one tiny pixel at a time. Peterson does such a good job showing how he and Jan were everything to each other until, without meaning to, she left. The disease floated her out of their intimacy into a cloud bank of confusion.
How much of marriage is being able to finish each other's sentences? Knowing how to feed joy to your spouse? Retelling your favorite stories to swell the present with the sweetness of the past? Being a counterweight to your husband or wife's struggles?
If we could, we would hang sandbags, lower anchors, anything to keep them here with us, but no one can counterweight a person's evaporation, especially not the loved one left behind. In the story, Peterson shares a friend's perspective that every visit is another funeral.
Which is why I haven't read the book, Jan's Story. Jack has done an amazing job of teaching me that fear deserves no more attention than a kick in the teeth, but still. Some things eat me alive inside and this is one. Statistics show that Alzheimer's is on the rise and when your husband has 28 years of aging on you, fear has a leg up.
We all know that when you focus on what you fear you head right for it, which is why I don't mind seeing the story for the third time. I need frequent reminding; the lesson Jan taught him, Peterson says, is to soak up every day and be very grateful for the glory that is the present. Maybe if I learn that lesson fast enough I can diffuse the fear, let go of the future and trust it, too, will be glorious and full of love.
Jan and Jack are both right. Kick away from the dock of fear and water ski over that jump. That's how we do it, right? How we get those stories?
Yes, dear, I said you are right. So when do we do we get to go water skiing?
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