Figment is having a 29 Day Writing Challenge for the month of February. I am a few days behind (okay, two weeks behind), but I am going to catch up. Here is
Day Five.
Write a short story about a character who lost something important to him/her.
“We’ve reviewed your test results, and you appear to have Alzheimer’s disease.”
The year was 1976––Jimmy Carter was just elected president, NASA introduced its first space shuttle, The Enterprise, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest won five Academy Awards and Alice Crouse sat in the doctor’s office with Theo yet again, trying to understand what was happening to her husband.
“This disease is a type of dementia that causes problems with memory, thinking, and behavior.”
In the summer of 1993 Tim, Chrissy and their three young children moved in with Tim’s grandmother Alice. Nicholas had just turned nine, Dustin had just turned four and Alice-Marie was just about to be one year old. Chrissy was very excited to be taking care of Alice, she thought she was very sweet and would never hurt a fly. While Tim was at work and Nicholas was at school, Chrissy would stay home with Grandma Alice, her other two children, and three daycare kids.
Alice really wasn’t sure when it started. Theo was always so obsessive compulsive about his tools. He drew outlines of his tools on the walls to keep everything organized. Have his tools been in their place? She never really goes in his workshop, that’s a man’s place. It was when members of the church started making comments that Alice really knew something was amiss with Theo.
Little Lyle Lucas was helping him build a stage in the front of the sanctuary. Everything seemed to be going just fine. At the end of the day, though, Lyle told Alice how funny Theo was.
“How was he funny?”
“He just kept doin’ funny stuff,” Lyle answered.
“What kind of funny stuff?” Alice asked.
“Like, one time I asked for a hammer and he handed me a wrench and when I told him his mistake he looked all confused. And, like, I had to help him hammer at one point. He was just so funny.”
Alice smiled for Little Lyle but knew then that there was something wrong with her husband. He’s a very serious person, not one to make silly jokes while he’s working. He wouldn’t just forget how to build something or confuse his tools, not something so important to him. That’s when the doctors appointments started.
Alice was a very independent woman and didn’t like people doing things for her. When Chrissy tried to take the vacuum away from her, Alice pushed her and ran out the door. It was winter and the ground was covered with ice and snow and the frail woman wore no sweater.
Chrissy didn’t know what to do, she couldn’t go out to look for her because she had the five children at home to watch. She sent Dustin across the street to check the church thinking Alice could have gone to play the organ, but the church was empty.
She finally got up the nerve to call the drug stores to ask about Alice. Joe Foltmer answered the phone and told her Alice was safe and asleep on the couch. Chrissy told Joe to send her home when she woke up.
“It is a progressive disease. This means it gets worse over time and continues to progress for the rest of a person's life. In the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, memory loss may be mild. Symptoms in this stage may include getting confused in familiar places and taking longer than usual to complete normal daily tasks.”
Theo got progressively worse after that day with Lyle. He was having a harder time getting up in the morning. Simple tasks such as brushing his teeth and tying his shoes became a chore for him. He would spend hours in his work shop ‘organizing’ his tools but the work shop became increasingly disorganized as his mind turned to jell-o.
Alice removed all the aluminum from the house; she had heard that it would worsen Alzheimer’s symptoms and she did not want that to happen to Theo. However, getting it out of the work shop was another story. Theo would not stand her trifling through his tools and getting them out of place. She decided to sneak in to remove the aluminum when Theo was at meetings for the Oddfellow’s or the Masonic Societies. Theo never noticed anything missing, his mind was too gone, but Alice still felt guilty.
Alice loved to cook and was always very good at it, people at the church still talk about how good her dinner rolls were. So, she decided to make dinner for her “guests.” She cooked green beans in Crisco and topped the dish off with chocolate syrup.
“It is estimated that one to four family members act as caregivers for each individual with Alzheimer's disease.”
Soon, it became too hard for Alice to care for Theo and he was sent to a nursing home where he could properly be taken care of. Alice was sad to see him go. She was supposed to care for him in ‘sickness and in health,’ but his sickness became too much for her to handle.
So, Theo moved into Renata Healthcare Center on 815 Franklin Street. It was only a few blocks away from their home, but, to Alice, it felt like an eternity away. She had never spent more than a day away from her husband before.
“All caregivers of people with Alzheimer's face a devastating toll. Due to the physical and emotional burden of caregiving, nearly 60 percent of caregivers rate the emotional stress of caregiving as high or very high, and more than one-third report symptoms of depression.”
Knowing Alice would be the last in bed, Chrissy hid in the den with the lights off. She’d play solitaire on the computer and maybe have a glass of Aunt Toot’s whiskey. One glass soon became two and it then became the whole bottle. But, she would always replace the bottle so nobody would notice. As time went on, the bottle she replaced became bigger and bigger.
“More than 500,000 seniors die each year because they have the disease. If Alzheimer's was eliminated, half a million lives would be saved a year. It is officially the sixth leading cause of death in the United States and the fifth leading cause of death for those aged 65 and older.”
Theo Crouse died September 17, 1984, at the age of 73.
Tim and Chrissy were invited to attend an evening church event but were weary to go. Alice’s son John was in town and told the two to go and he would watch after Alice and the kids.
John was in the basement with the children but could hear Alice moving around upstairs. Not knowing what she was doing made him nervous so he left the kids in the basement to see what his mother was doing. While he was gone, Alice-Marie, still mastering the art of walking, tottered across the room too quickly.
Hearing the cries of his one year old niece, John ran downstairs and saw Alice-Marie sitting on the ground, holding her eye with blood running down her face. That’s when it was decided to put Alice in a nursing home.
Two years after Theo’s death, Alice flew to California to visit her grandchildren, the first time she felt comfortable enough to do something without her husband. While she was there, her grandchildren noticed how her personality had completely changed and she struggled doing basic day-to-day activities.
“Currently there is no cure for Alzheimer’s disease. Individuals live on average for eight to ten years from diagnosis.”
