Love in a time of Alzheimer’s
I know I promised that we would discuss the Kama Sutra this week, and whereas I am equally eager to write as you are to listen when it comes to sexual positions, I want to dedicate my space this week to speak about something which we long thought forgotten… perpetual male love.
You see, it is so easy to badger the poor guys for the mistakes of a few, but that is the same way women get a bad name.
I feel I must retract what I have written of some men, when there are men out there who fall in love and love unconditionally. I met a couple recently, and I feel compelled to share with you their story and struggle.
A lady you see, suffers from Alzheimer’s and her husband takes care of her even though she basically regards him as a stranger. I heard her telling her daughter, whom she does remember more frequently, that this man who lives with her, gives her everything she asks for.
She goes on to say that he even sleeps in her same bed at times, and she feels uncomfortable. She remembers him (her present husband) in certain days, but most often he patiently hears her as she remembers her ex-husband and has no idea that He (present husband) is even related to her.
She refuses to sleep with him, obviously since she barely remembers him, and he even respects her honor and privacy by sleeping in a room next to hers. He tends to her lovingly and makes sure she has everything.
She could have easily dumped her at a retirement home and paid the bill and as many would perhaps be tempted to do, just get another wife. Herein lies his plight, he loves her. He loves her so much that he waits weeks on end for the brief sporadic moments when she remembers him.
She continues her story to her daughter: He is nice to me, he regards me with endless terms of affection, and at times he holds my hand when we are speaking. I let go, and he immediately apologizes, but sometimes he becomes sad.
Do I make him sad? He cooks for me, and massages my foot when it hurts. Who is he? Why am I here. Who are you, where is my daughter?
Well then, I could go on, but I feel I would be blemishing a perfect love a man shares for a woman. So now, I am forced to reevaluate my venting towards men for now, and hope that sharing this will simply add testimony to the notion that we hold of men who love endlessly.
I remembered the movie the Notebook and I never thought that people actually live so. Perhaps more than finding a similarity between a movie and real life, I wanted this to show women that though true pure love is blissful and yet almost impossible to find, that there are men willing to respect their wives in the time when circumstances might distress them.
It is for these men that we now try to look at men differently and when a man has these outstanding qualities, all the jerks out there, including women, pale in comparison.
Perhaps men whose attitude toward women has not yet been fully shaped, I urge you to reconsider that women are wonderful, and you are too, if you chose to respect her and love her, perhaps you will go down in history as a legend, a legend of a perfect man. It is with these words I leave you and hope love makes a difference in your life.
