JOAN’S WEEKEND BLOG – FEBRUARY 16/17, 2013 – THE FIRST DATE AND ALZHEIMER GRIEF

This week, we reached another Alzheimer loss from which I am still reeling. It hit me so hard that I found myself doing something I haven’t done since the early days of diagnosis. I was driving and crying. I could not help myself. I cannot talk about it, because I choke up and cry. I am really beginning to feel the grief of losing my husband, and it hurts as only an Alzheimer Spouse who has experienced this type of loss can understand.

Let me first tell you a little story. After you read it, you will appreciate how deeply this loss has affected me.

Those of us who spent our childhood in the 50’s and our teenage years in the 60’s are aware of the stark changes in sexual mores that occurred between those decades. When I wasn’t quite sure what “sleeping with a boy” meant, my mother made sure that I knew it was BAD, BAD, BAD, unless you happened to be married to him. Then it was acceptable. Expected, actually. I managed to remain virtuous throughout high school only because I was deathly afraid of being labeled a “TRAMP”, as my mother assured me was the moniker of all girls who slept with boys before they were married.

I entered college in 1966, right smack in the middle of the “sexual revolution”, a term which meant that boys weren’t the only ones with sexual urges, and girls were now free to act on theirs, thanks to the invention of the birth control pill. At the end of my first 2 months as a college freshman, I learned that either my mother had lied to me, or every girl in Rhode Island, except me, was “a tramp”.

I am telling you this so you understand the significance of my first date adventure with Sid. By then, I was a college senior, had finally defied my mother the previous summer, for no other reason than curiosity, and was hoping for better experiences in the future.

It was November, 1969. The phone rang in my dorm room, and it was Sid Gershman, whom I had known casually since I was 10 years old, as he was my cousin’s best friend. The most recent meeting had been a few months before, when my cousin A., brought Sid along on one of A’s visits to my house. It was at that meeting that I decided I wanted to date him, but had no idea what to do about it. Apparently, I was giving off some kind of vibes, because on that November day, he asked me out to a party the following weekend, being given by a friend of his and A’s. I was ecstatic, and made plans to travel from RI to Boston, stay at my cousin’s apartment, and go to the party with Sid.

When my cousin met me at the bus in Boston, I was unprepared (to say the least) for the bombshell he dropped on me. The party was that evening. He told me I could change at his apartment, but I wasn’t staying there. He and his new “honey” were staying there, and he booked a hotel room for me and Sid. Have you ever seen a little 5 foot, 114 lb. college senior get hysterical and go ballistic on the streets of Boston? You did if you were there that afternoon when he told me of his plans. I was yelling at him that I couldn’t stay in a hotel with Sid. I didn’t want him to think I was “that kind of girl” (You know, the “tramp” kind). I wanted the date to go well; I wanted there to be future dates. I didn’t want to be a “one night stand”. I was not staying in a hotel with Sid, and that was that.

Sid picked me up at A’s apartment, and the date went so well, I fell instantly in love that night. I knew it immediately. I don’t know how I knew it, but I did. From the minute we were together, we were in love. If you don’t believe in love at first sight, or love at first date, then you don’t know us.

Since I had gotten nowhere in my protests with my cousin over sleeping arrangements, I told Sid on the way to the Holiday Inn hotel that I had no plans to have sex with him that night. I did not have a lot of experience with hotels, but I was pretty sure most of them came with two beds, so that would solve the problem. Not before then, nor since then, have I ever seen a Holiday Inn hotel room or any hotel room, for that matter, with one bed in it (except one large king), but that’s what this one had. One bed. Not even a king or queen. One double bed. I repeated to him that I didn’t know him well enough to have sex with him, and we were going to work this out somehow.

The somehow turned out to be me sleeping in a full length, long sleeve flannel nightgown AND a full length quilted bathrobe, facing away from him. Or as away as you can get in a double bed. For the one and only time since I have known him, he slept in pajamas. He made an effort to be a gentleman. Meaning he made a few advances, but got the message fairly quickly that I meant what I said about no sex. Believe me, it was not because I did not want to. It was because I did not want to mess up my chances with this man (27 years old to my just turned 21), with whom I was already falling in love.

The rest is history. Within 2 weeks, we knew we were meant for each other, and planned to get married. Within 2 months, we were engaged, and 7 months after our first date, two weeks after I graduated college in June 1970, we were married. (FYI- I made him wait through a month of dating before I shed the flannel and embraced the title of “tramp”.) The story of our “first date” was retold and laughed about for the next three and a half decades.

At one of our engagement parties, A and his “honey”, whom he also married, gave us a big box wrapped in beautiful ribbons. We got quite a chuckle when we opened it and saw that it was Holiday Inn towels and toiletries. Throughout our engagement, whenever we went somewhere that required a hotel, we always stayed at a Holiday Inn.

On every anniversary, we laughed about how I wouldn’t let him touch me when we “slept together” on our first date. My cousin never tired of telling the story to everyone.

Sadly, you know how this ends and the reason for this blog. Two nights ago, we were watching an old 2 ½ Men show about a first date, and Sid asked me if I remembered our first date. He wanted me to tell him about it, because………………as hard as he tried, he could not remember a thing about it.

Tears are running down my face as I write this. For him to have forgotten such a monumental cornerstone of our life is incomprehensible to me. I am thunderstruck. I feel as if I am completely losing the life we have lived together. As his memory of our life together leaves him, he, as the person I knew, dies a little more. I am heartsick. I am grieving, and I hate Alzheimer’s Disease.

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