Genuine Love Demonstrated

My elderly neighbor just died. She was two months shy of her eightieth birthday, but her health had been deteriorating for several years, ever since she started manifesting early symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. She was actually doing well, even though she was, no doubt, in the last stages of her illness. However, she fell and broke her hip in October or November which required surgery, followed by a second surgery a week later. The broken hip was bad enough for someone of her age, irrespective of that person's health; however, the surgery seemed to exacerbate the dementia. She forgot how to swallow. She stopped speaking as well. While her husband was debating whether or not to place a feeding tube, she died. Luckily, she didn't die of starvation, so her husband need never feel he didn't do everything humanly possible for her survival. In fact, his love for his wife is the reason for my writing.

Karl and Meta were married for sixty-two years. Like most marriages, it no doubt had its ups and downs. Mike and I have been their neighbors for the last twenty-three years and not once during that time did we ever hear or see him upset with his wife. Privately, I am sure there were disagreements from time to time, but publicly, he always treated her with kindness and respect. Because we had experienced the same type of dementia with my stepmother and with Mike's dad, Karl began to share with us his concerns about Meta as she demonstrated forgetfulness beyond the "why did I come into this room?" everyone experiences from time to time.

He eventually had her admitted to the dementia unit of the UCI Medical Center for evaluation and formal diagnosis. Her doctors strongly suggested he have her admitted to an Alzheimer's unit of a care facility because of the difficulty of providing care for someone with her stage of the disease at the time. Even his daughters thought he should do as the doctors suggested since they were concerned with the effect caring for her would have on him. Karl declined to do what they suggested because "she wanted to come home," and because when he married, it was "for better or for worse." This stage of care giving lasted for two or three years, with there being a slow, relentless decline in her condition. At the end, he was making the meals, feeding her, cleaning the house, bathing her, getting up with her at night so she wouldn't fall going to the restroom and chauffeuring around her eighty-nine year old brother who has been living with them for over a year and a half. All of this, plus more of which I am unaware, must have been very difficult for a man who soon turns eighty-four and has a bad back. However, he never complained, rather, he would just express concern for her.

Her funeral was held last Thursday on an unseasonably hot day for January. Mike was a pallbearer, along with her grandsons and sons-in-law. There were a large number of people in attendance, something that seemed a little unusual for the death of someone her age where time has brought about the deaths of peers, relatives, and friends. Then, I had the realization that most were there for Karl's sake or for the sake of his two daughters. I say this with no attempt to diminish who Meta was or what she deserved, but to emphasize the respect that Karl's family and friends had for someone who chose to "love until the end," under the most dire of circumstances. When I watched him at the grave site, I realized that he would have given anything to have her back, in any condition, for just one more day. His grief was palpable. At some time, I hope to tell him that he demonstrated for the rest of us how genuine love behaves. He lived out the Biblical admonition in Ephesians 5:25A, "Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her...."