It can be said that the hardest part for the suffering of family and friends of Alzheimer’s disease patients is to watch their loved one’s deteriorate. In the case of one wife it was to have her husband shriek at her, obviously referring to his World War experiences “Cannot you see the bodies” in the trench. To another it was to decide to tell their father only one time that his wife had passed on. To explain the event and circumstances to him any more than one time would, they decided be cruel. After all, their father had no long term, only short term memory. Each and every time they explained to him as to where “Be mother” “the answer that seemed to suffice to their father, who after all in a progressively deteriorating state of his Alzheimer’s was that “Mother is out shopping” or “At the store with the caregiver”. Such are the events and lives not only of the ill person but also family and close friends who live with the specter of this illness of the aged.
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