JOAN’S BLOG – MONDAY, MAY 12, 2014 – ANGER

We Alzheimer Spouses have quite a bit to be angry about, and we have expressed the reasons for that anger articulately, here in the place we feel safe and secure to do so. We have discussed our anger in my blogs and on the message boards over what Alzheimer’s Disease has stolen from us – our spouses; lovers; savings; future plans for retirement; travel; friends and relatives who do not understand our plight; our mental, physical, and emotional health; to name but a few.

However, we do not often talk about our anger at what the disease has done to our husbands and wives who have it. Last week, as I watched my husband, confused and hurt, crying over his change in mealtime seating, I was engulfed in anger at what this disease has done to the man who was smart enough to run a business, oversee employees, fix, hook up, and manipulate any piece of electronic equipment as fast as it was invented; strong enough to fix any problem I got myself into; gentle enough to wipe away my tears and soothe my emotional hurts; and sexy enough to make my heart skip beats at the sight of him.

I wanted to jump up and down, scream as loud as I could, stamp my feet, ANYTHING, to express my outrage at what has become of him. His loss of memory of our life together is painful for me to endure, but it is a small part of the bigger picture that the outside world does not see.

They do not see or hear his confusion when he sometimes calls me at night, asking me where I am, when I am coming to visit, what the time is where I am. They do not see the blank look in his eyes as he stares at me. They do not see the aides dress him, shower him, put him to bed. They do not see the small, narrow, single bed in which he sleeps – alone – without me, the woman he still calls the best thing that ever happened to him. They do not see his inability to understand cause and effect, thus eliciting his outbursts at the staff, when something HE has done causes them to move him away from others. They do not see his sadness and tears at being separated from me. They do not hear him ask where the bathroom is every time I visit. They do hear him ask where his room is when I tell him that is where the bathroom is.

How could this happen to him? To anyone with this dreadful, hateful, disease? There are times when I go to visit him that I want to throw his walker against the wall, tear the sheets off of that pathetic little bed, scream and cry and yell that it is not fair that Alzheimer’s Disease stripped him of his cognition, memory, future.

Many years ago, a psychologist taught me that anger is a secondary emotion. It is what we express when we are unable to, do not want to, or do not know how, to express what is really bothering us. I do not feel that is the case in my situation. I know very well that my underlying emotion is deep, sorrowful sadness, but right now, I feel ANGER, and it is what I want to express. I am angry at Alzheimer’s Disease for destroying a man who was good, kind, and decent. Neither he nor anyone who is stricken by Alzheimer’s Disease deserves such a fate. Do any of you feel this anger?

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