by Tess Lojacono
I call it an Epidemic, because Alzheimer’s Disease is spreading at an alarming rate. Today, 280,000 Pennsylvanians live with Alzheimer’s disease, 6.7 million Americans suffer with the disease and this number is expected to double by 2060.
Here is one man’s experience with his father’s disease:
Alzheimer’s
by Anthony Walton
He sits, silent,
no longer mistaking the cable
news for company—
and when he talks, he talks of childhood,
remembering some slight or conundrum
as if it is a score to be retailed
and settled after seventy-five years.
Rare, the sudden lucidity
that acknowledges this thing
that has happened
to me…
More often, he recounts
his father’s cruelty
or a chance deprived
to him, a Negro
under Jim Crow.
Five minutes ago escapes him
as he chases 1934, unaware
of the present beauty out the window,
the banks of windswept snow—
or his wife, humming in the kitchen,
or the twilit battles in Korea, or me
when he remembers that I am his son.
This condition—with a name that implies
the proprietary,
possession,
spiritual
and otherwise—
as if it owns him,
which it does.
If you have a loved one with Alzheimer’s Disease, please think of us. Fine Art Miracles lifts people with this debilitating illness every day.
