When you’re young, you don’t know where your life will go and how many turns it will take.
Youth has so many advantages, doesn’t it? In most cases, you have your health, there are not many things you can’t do if you put your mind to it. You can climb trees, scale a fence or play all kinds of sports. You can run fast and have the energy of 10 people.
You develop, mature, learn, get stronger, even get philosophical and, sometimes, even fall in love.
As you enter your teens, family parties are a blast because everyone is there: parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts. Sometimes you can be lucky and still have great-grandparents, great aunts and great uncles.
I was that guy. I knew one of my great-grandparents, had tons of great aunts and uncles. Even though both sides of my family were not large in numbers, all of my first cousins were intact. It was great to have everyone around.
For many of those years, it was the norm. When you’re a teenager, you think everyone lives forever, right? We take so much for granted when we’re young.
I would often think of how I would turn out in life. Who would I marry? How many children would I have? Would I have a good job? Would I stay in Greater Pittston?
Getting ill or having anything wrong with me was never a thought. That changed when some of my family members got ill and passed away. Even then, young people don’t get sick – or at least that’s what you’d think or even hope.
I had a reality check once I graduated from high school when I was losing a classmate a year for about the first 10 years out of high school. It was shocking. Still, I always felt nothing would happen to me at an early age.
As I entered my early to mid-20s, all that changed. I’ve documented it so many times in print when my dad was stricken with Alzheimer’s disease. It was devastating. It was a kick in the backside for my family and me. When Dad was diagnosed, not much was known about Alzheimer’s.
One of my best friends growing up had an uncle diagnosed with the dreaded disease. Nobody really knew how to handle such a case and that included my family.
What do we do with Dad? He wasn’t acting right and his personality changed every day.
We kept him home until he was nearly 60-years-old when we realized, as a family, we could not take care of him. He was a threat to us; I was worried about my mom’s safety and, above all, I was worried dad would hurt himself.
Placing him in a nursing home was bittersweet. I knew he’d have around the clock care and that put me at ease, but this was my dad and not even 60 years old in a nursing home? That was just crazy.
I felt like I was turning my back on him; I was giving up on him. I felt like I was betraying him. I even felt like I was his judge and jury and I sentenced him to a life of imprisonment. It was awful.
Years later, my dad had a male first cousin on the same collision course. The timeline was almost identical. It was scary knowing lightning had struck twice in my family.
Both men were great guys, full of life. Both were young and had so much to look forward to but having the fall of their years taken away from them was unfortunate. They would never know their grandchildren that well. And the grandchildren would only know their grandfather as a person with an awful illness.
I always felt bad for my daughters for not having the chance to know their grandfather like I knew the man.
Lightning struck for a third time in our family when a female first cousin of my dad’s was diagnosed in her 50s several years back.
Genetics plays a heavy roll in so many illnesses and it’s evident that Alzheimer’s disease is something that runs on my father’s side of the family.
We lost my dad’s female cousin this past week. As a matter of fact, she passed away April 3 — sandwiched in between the anniversaries of the deaths of my dad and mom.
Is it environmental? Perhaps there might be a case for my dad and cousin number one because they both lived in Greater Pittston, but our female cousin grew up and lived on Long Island, NY.
All three souls died in their mid-60s — yet another piece of irony.
Over the last few years, two of my classmates have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and my heart goes out to them. They have medicines today that slow down the progression of the disease that robs your memory, but those medicines do not save lives.
Strides have been made to find a cure, but first there needs to be a definitive test to accurately diagnose the disease. I was told the only way to know for sure my dad had Alzheimer’s was by doing an autopsy.
I hope all those stricken today and tomorrow will have relief and a possible cure in the not-too-distant future.
Quote of the week
“Never a lip is curved with pain that can’t be kissed into smiles again.” – Bret Harte, American writer.
Thought of the week
“You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips.” – Oliver Goldsmith, Irish poet.
Bumper sticker
“Fear is the highest fence.” – Dudley Nichols, American screenwriter and director.
