My mother-in-law is losing her marbles. They’re just about gone actually, if you consider having marbles the ability to remember what happened five days or even five minutes ago. Margaret Wildhack’s few remaining long-term memories embrace her sister and her brother, people whose histories she has shared for 70 years or more. Everyone else–including her own three children, their spouses, and grand-children–is a bit of a puzzle. She recognizes a few of us in some fundamental sense as people who are important to her, but the labels of “daughter,” “son-in-law,” and “grandchild” have disappeared.
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In the book, after the initial horror of captivity has subsided, Montana falls happily into the rhythm of Tralfamadorian life. To Tralfamadorians, as Billy puts it, “All moments, past, present, and future, have always existed, always will exist.” And so Tralfamadorians “ignore the awful times and concentrate on the good ones,” a philosophy that describes Mig’s worldview before and after Alzheimer’s. Years ago, prior to the onset of the disease’s symptoms, it was Mig’s custom to never dwell upon the negative. She was deeply touched by any instance of misfortune and worked hard–as a schoolteacher, political activist, and journalist–to alleviate the suffering of others. Yet personal misfortunes were more or less glossed over. In fact, the closer the calamity was to her personal life, the more she held it at a distance. By the time I met her in 1985 she’d forgotten that she was married to Bill Wildhack for more than 20 years, let alone that they raised three children together.
I know something about Alzheimer’s. Long before the diagnosis existed, people suffered from it, and I came into intimate contact with many of them in the convalescent center where I was an orderly for four years–far longer than average in this line of work. We had a variety of infirmities on our skilled-care unit, from patients with cerebral palsy to teenage car-crash victims in full-body casts to people simply exhausted by their long–sometimes century-long–lives. Those with Alzheimer’s were termed “senile” or lumped under the general label of “organic brain syndrome.”
Generally speaking, Mig has nothing ill to say about anyone. Even when her roommate hits her–for who knows what reason–Mig struggles to find an explanation. She calls this roommate “The Babe,” and somehow perceives that this 80-year-old woman is no more than a toddler. Mig has frustrated the nursing staff several times by getting the Babe out of bed at all hours of the night and dressing her. She also has repeatedly tried to remove the Babe’s apnea device, which is attached to her chest to monitor her respiration. Mig is convinced it’s some kind of explosive device–an act of terrorism against innocent toddlers. If I’d been Mig’s orderly I’m not sure how I would have dealt with this. Would I have thanked her for her heroism and put her to bed? Would I have told her that the device was actually a small video camera that protected the Babe from potential cat burglars?
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Mike Werner.
