Last night I watched Elizabeth is Missing with Glenda Jackson as the main protagonist, Maude. She is an elderly woman in the early stages of Alzheimer’s who lives alone. In the first few scenes, we notice signs on the cupboards and doors describing what is inside, and one on the front door reminds her to lock up. Maude also compulsively writes notes “so I can remember” she says. We soon understand that her condition comes and goes. She remembers to work in the garden with her friend Elizabeth, but on another visit she can’t remember which house belongs to Elizabeth, until she does. Despite the satisfactory resolution of the main mystery, we see Maude slowly devolve until she cannot be trusted to live alone. She causes heartache and havoc in the lives of her daughter and granddaughter. What Jackson does so well is illustrate the deep frustration of Maude as she understands her memory is erratic and fading. She knows she has “spaces” in her head, and at one poignant moment she cries when she realizes she hadn’t recognized her daughter.
Another movie out right now is The Father with Anthony Hopkins playing the title role. I haven’t had the courage to watch it yet, but the trailers show us another tale of descent into Alzheimer’s and the agony of a daughter watching it happen and trying to humanely cope.
As an aging woman living with an aging man with contemporaries who are also aging, it occurs to me that the primary cause for any upset is the lack of control. First we retire, which means loss of meaningful contribution to the world around us. The small (or large) circle of duties we performed each day was under our control. Then it wasn’t. Our body, the body that once birthed babies, fed them, rocked them, plucked them from danger, hugged them, clapped for them, with a heart that ached for them, ears that heard them, that body begins to fail. The mind that could calculate equations in seconds, that could balance a budget of thousands, that remembered names from years ago, that mind, slowly, slowly, develops blank spots, lapses, only to fill in those blanks hours later—or not at all. Control over the body and over the mind lessens with every year.
Hardest of all is the loss of respect from others. Checkers who once saw a strong, stalwart individual, now ask if you need help with the groceries. Bank clerks speak slowly and perhaps a little louder as you ask them to repeat a question. Grown children who once asked for permission to stay out late, start questioning your decisions. They want to reorganize your life, change things, when you want them to stay the same. Children you once controlled, now try to control you.
That lack of control hurts the most of all. It comes to us all. Knowing that is easy, but accepting it is not. So, like Maude, we fight. We fight to retain control before we lose it all.
