What can the harvest hope for, if not for the care of the reaper man?
By now it's all over the internet that Terry Pratchett has issued a press release stating that he has early-onset Alzheimer's.
Like many of you, Terry Pratchett is one of my favorite authors. In fact, if you eliminate motorcycle touring books from the equation, he is my favorite author. The Discworld series have been on my bookshelves for at least ten years -- they're the first books I reach for when I need to relax, to feel better, or to just escape for a little while.
For ten years, the Discworld books were the first books I reached for while grieving for my father, who died on December 16, 2005. From Alzheimer's.
You don't grieve normally with Alzheimer's disease. You don't stand around a bedside, looking down at a forever-still figure and grieve for what was. You live your life, every second of every hour of every day after the diagnosis, grieving for what will never be. You grieve before death. Death is a relief, a blessing, a reward.
I was driving south on Highway 85 at about 6pm on a Friday night when my mom called. "I have sad news," she said. And I laughed. We were so happy. I got a massage that night, then went to sushi to celebrate a friend's birthday. I wouldn't cry for days afterwards. I had been crying since November 1996, when dad was diagnosed.
Diagnosis is tricky with Alzheimer's. Someone isn't so much diagnosed with Alzheimer's as they are "undiagnosed with anything else". They rule out stroke, blood clots, dementia, etc. Terry Pratchett had had a series of small strokes prior to his diagnosis, which no doubt clouded the results. The only way to 100% diagnose Alzheimer's -- at least, in 1996 -- was to perform an autopsy and cut open the patient's brain.
My dad was always in "la la land," as we put it. My friends and I called him "the kumquat" in junior high school (mostly because kumquat was a funny word to say). Dad would do funny things like drive a mile out of his way to avoid a red traffic light, or insist on going with 16-year-old me to the gas station so as to use his 76 gas card, or he would hoard. When my parents moved from the house I grew up in, we opened the garage attic to find boxes and boxes of used Dixie cups. He would go through the trash to pull out things that I "couldn't have meant to throw out".
How would Captain Vimes react to Alzheimer's? No doubt the same way that Terry Pratchett is -- with a little bit of pragmatism and a little bit of humor. But what is going on inside?
I cannot imagine a torture worse than Alzheimer's.
Many comments I've read have said things along the lines of "well, at least it's early onset so he can probably get some more books out". Even Pratchett himself is quoted as saying, "Frankly, I would prefer it if people kept things cheerful, because I think there's time for at least a few more books yet." Can you imagine the horror of making that statement? Every day after dad got "bad", my mom and I thanked --- God? Biology? -- that dad no longer remembered what he lost; that he no longer had to be afraid of what was coming.
Terry Pratchett's daughter is one year older than I am. I know nothing about her other than that her name is Rhianna and that she was born in 1976. I do not envy her her future. I have known no greater soul-wrenching pain than picturing my father -- the man with me as a baby in photographs, the man who drove me to tennis matches, the man who was supposed to dance in my wedding and bounce my children on his knee -- than picturing that man in his red plaid flannel pajamas and wishing to God, please, God, that he would die.
I'm so sorry, Rhianna, wherever you are.
And so I will try not to grieve Terry Pratchett yet, but I doubt I will succeed. With any luck, Binky will arrive sooner rather than later, and Mr Pratchett can start his walk across the black sands. The Turtle Moves, Mr Pratchett, and you made it so. Thank you.
Warren Brooks Boyce
July 31, 1928 - December 16, 2005.
Please consider donating to the Alzheimer's Association.
Like many of you, Terry Pratchett is one of my favorite authors. In fact, if you eliminate motorcycle touring books from the equation, he is my favorite author. The Discworld series have been on my bookshelves for at least ten years -- they're the first books I reach for when I need to relax, to feel better, or to just escape for a little while.
For ten years, the Discworld books were the first books I reached for while grieving for my father, who died on December 16, 2005. From Alzheimer's.
You don't grieve normally with Alzheimer's disease. You don't stand around a bedside, looking down at a forever-still figure and grieve for what was. You live your life, every second of every hour of every day after the diagnosis, grieving for what will never be. You grieve before death. Death is a relief, a blessing, a reward.
I was driving south on Highway 85 at about 6pm on a Friday night when my mom called. "I have sad news," she said. And I laughed. We were so happy. I got a massage that night, then went to sushi to celebrate a friend's birthday. I wouldn't cry for days afterwards. I had been crying since November 1996, when dad was diagnosed.
Diagnosis is tricky with Alzheimer's. Someone isn't so much diagnosed with Alzheimer's as they are "undiagnosed with anything else". They rule out stroke, blood clots, dementia, etc. Terry Pratchett had had a series of small strokes prior to his diagnosis, which no doubt clouded the results. The only way to 100% diagnose Alzheimer's -- at least, in 1996 -- was to perform an autopsy and cut open the patient's brain.
My dad was always in "la la land," as we put it. My friends and I called him "the kumquat" in junior high school (mostly because kumquat was a funny word to say). Dad would do funny things like drive a mile out of his way to avoid a red traffic light, or insist on going with 16-year-old me to the gas station so as to use his 76 gas card, or he would hoard. When my parents moved from the house I grew up in, we opened the garage attic to find boxes and boxes of used Dixie cups. He would go through the trash to pull out things that I "couldn't have meant to throw out".
How would Captain Vimes react to Alzheimer's? No doubt the same way that Terry Pratchett is -- with a little bit of pragmatism and a little bit of humor. But what is going on inside?
I cannot imagine a torture worse than Alzheimer's.
Many comments I've read have said things along the lines of "well, at least it's early onset so he can probably get some more books out". Even Pratchett himself is quoted as saying, "Frankly, I would prefer it if people kept things cheerful, because I think there's time for at least a few more books yet." Can you imagine the horror of making that statement? Every day after dad got "bad", my mom and I thanked --- God? Biology? -- that dad no longer remembered what he lost; that he no longer had to be afraid of what was coming.
Terry Pratchett's daughter is one year older than I am. I know nothing about her other than that her name is Rhianna and that she was born in 1976. I do not envy her her future. I have known no greater soul-wrenching pain than picturing my father -- the man with me as a baby in photographs, the man who drove me to tennis matches, the man who was supposed to dance in my wedding and bounce my children on his knee -- than picturing that man in his red plaid flannel pajamas and wishing to God, please, God, that he would die.
I'm so sorry, Rhianna, wherever you are.
And so I will try not to grieve Terry Pratchett yet, but I doubt I will succeed. With any luck, Binky will arrive sooner rather than later, and Mr Pratchett can start his walk across the black sands. The Turtle Moves, Mr Pratchett, and you made it so. Thank you.
Warren Brooks Boyce
July 31, 1928 - December 16, 2005.
Please consider donating to the Alzheimer's Association.