“We continue to make a life together, living together in the full sense of the word; going about our life, hand in hand, with everyone lending a hand, as though nothing was wrong at all.” Charles D. Snelling, husband for 61 years of Adrienne Snelling, and author of Life Report in the NY Times about what it is like to care for a loved one with Alzheimer’s.
I know there are many, many people on Google+ whose lives have been irreversibly affected by a visitation from that most unwelcome guest, Alzheimer’s. The issues that a family faces when they are caring for a loved one with any form of dementia are complex and vast. It is emotionally, psychologically, financially and spiritually taxing beyond belief. Figuring out the right thing to do in any given family is extremely difficult, and it is an issue that requires our deepest reservoir of empathy and understanding.
This man, Charles Snelling, brought closure to his own family and to his life with his afflicted wife in the best way he knew how. The Snelling family said Mr. Snelling had acted “out of deep devotion and profound love.” There is an epidemic of Alzheimer’s in our country. The price families pay when faced with this horrid disease is impossible to measure.
My mother died of Alzhiemer’s in 2004, and her illness took a huge toll on our family, as it does on every family I have ever met who has to deal with it. I found Snelling’s personal account of caring for his wife very moving.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/31/us/love-that-endured-alzheimers-ends-in-2-deaths.html?_r=1&hp
March 31, 2012 at 3:15 pm
Truly David Elliott, truly.
March 31, 2012 at 3:29 pm
Matthew Graybosch personally I don’t know which gives me more anxiety – the possibility that I could go down the same road as my mother, or that my husband’s life would be destroyed by the anxiety, stress and financial strain of trying to take care of me. Perhaps I’ll just take a road trip and walk off into the desert and give myself over to the Gods…
March 31, 2012 at 3:36 pm
No, Matthew Graybosch those are devils. I mean the Gods of Empathy. For many on Earth would be happy to see my husband’s life totally destoyed and call it “love.” I don’t know what to call it. But Alzheimer’s takes no prisoners. It seems to take out entire families…
March 31, 2012 at 3:53 pm
Giselle Minoli knows that I am watching my father descend into the depths of dementia/Alzheimer’s right now. It is painful to watch, it is painful to remember what he was, and it is painful to know that we have more to endure. I understand the inclination to end the scene you are watching unfold before you. However, I resoundingly reject the act of taking matters into your own hands and purposefully ending someone’s life. It is not our decision – no matter how painful the path is.
There is no evidence that a person in the final stages of Alzheimer’s even knows what is really going on around them or with themselves. Their “self” is all but gone. What we are really ending by taking an Alzheimer’s patient’s life is OUR OWN pain in watching it happen.
While I have distinct orders for my father’s caregivers to not intervene in the natural course of his remaining time here (no feeding tubes, no resuscitation, etc.), I could not possibly consider purposefully ending his life. I sympathize with Mr. Snelling and the pain he endured, but his final act was wrong on two counts. Just because you act of of love and concern it does not mean your actions are right.
March 31, 2012 at 3:57 pm
This is true, Daniel Bobke. I was very careful to say that I found the article moving and that Charles Snelling did what he felt was right in his own heart. I do not judge him. We all have different circumstances in our lives. We have wells of different depths that hold vastly different amounts of financial resources, psychological, emotional and spiritual strength and family support. This isn’t about right and wrong. I don’t think anyone can determine that for someone else. It is an utterly impossible situation for many, many people. I believe that you are doing absolutely what is right for your family and your father. I don’t think anyone is condoning killing a loved one with Alzheimer’s. This is a horribly sad story.
March 31, 2012 at 4:01 pm
Matthew Graybosch You and I have a TOTALLY different world view, so I will not argue with you. Mine consists of a God who does love us and who provides opportunity to see Him in even the worst possible circumstances. You may not understand it or accept it, but I have grown closer to God in this process.
March 31, 2012 at 4:07 pm
Giselle Minoli I appreciate you sharing the story. It is a horribly sad story – completely tragic and I know you were not necessarily expressing anything but the sadness of this story. We are often called to endure hardship in our lives – we all do it. As Mr. Snelling said, his life was full of ups and downs.
I do believe there are acts that we have to judge – we judge people and their actions every day of our lives. As much as I sympathize with the pain Mr. Snelling endured, I think his actions in the end were wrong. I don’t necessarily aim for what is right “for me or my family” – I try to aim for what is right.
March 31, 2012 at 4:08 pm
Daniel Bobke I fought with the caretakers of my mother at her dedicated Alzheimer’s facility who told me that “there was no one in there.” I was able to communicate with my mother in ways that not one single other person was able to and I am writing about that. All of that said, many, many people cannot put their loved ones with dementia into the hands of loving people (my mother’s caretakers were beyond loving, they were incredible) because they can’t afford it. Most families have no skills, no education and statistically it falls to girl children to either move home with Mom or Dad or into whose homes Mom or Dad move with this affliction. That is not of course always the case but mostly…for very complex financial reasons. It is a situation that many families never recover from…their relationships torn asunder, their finances ruined. All of this does not condone, point to or indicate ending anyone’s life. But I have seen time and again people pushed to the brink of what they as individuals can handle. Again, I think it’s unfair to judge anyone. You may very well have been born with more strength in the bank than many people in your shoes, more family support and more resources. As for Mr. Snelling, I do believe he did what he felt was the right thing for him to do. Else he wouldn’t have done it. This was not an ignorant unfeeling man.
March 31, 2012 at 4:14 pm
I guess that is the difference Giselle Minoli – I don’t think that just because one feels it is the right thing to do that it necessarily is. He was clearly not an ignorant, unfeeling man. I can understand his desire to not have to watch his wife die that way, but choosing suicide for himself is nothing more than a selfish act.
March 31, 2012 at 4:21 pm
One thing I do find myself “judging” Daniel Bobke is insisting that we know what is “right” for anyone else to do. We simply don’t. We cannot. None of us were given that wisdom, that insight, that clairvoyance. This man loved this woman for 61 years. That is what I know and “judge” him by. Not by the way their lives ended together. I cannot believe that he came to this decision easily. As for me…I would want to spare my husband the sorrow that I know he would have to face. I would spare him that because I love him.
March 31, 2012 at 4:25 pm
We will have to agree to disagree on that Giselle Minoli. There are absolutes that we all operate under.
March 31, 2012 at 4:29 pm
Lance Hagood That is a lot for one person to have to deal with in their life. Yes, you are right Sturdy Sisters and Daughters and Sturdy Brothers and Sons often stay away. I do not judge them either, however. I have known so many people whose families think that they should give up their careers and move home. I can tell you this: my mother took a plane to come see me in New York and made me promise that if anything ever happened to her that I would put her in a home rather than give up the things that mattered to me. This is deeply personal stuff, Lance, but she said that, in part, because of everything she gave up in her own family when she was a child.
I don’t understand, I really do not, why we are so judgmental when it comes to other people’s families. Clearly, you are doing, again, what you think is the right thing for you to do and I respect and admire you tremendously for it. And…you are indeed altruistic…clearly.
March 31, 2012 at 4:34 pm
Philosophically speaking, only when there is universal agreement…meaning absolutely every single person on Planet Earth agrees to the definition of right and wrong…only then can we agree on absolutes. I would urge everyone to watch the brilliant documentary My Brother’s Keeper, by Bruce Sinofsky and Joe Berlinger. Never have I seen a more well explored example of how difficult it is to judge another person’s perception of what, exactly, is “the right thing to do.” A powerful, powerful film. Hard to get, but worth the effort.
March 31, 2012 at 8:27 pm
Judgement is easy, making tough decisions is difficult. “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” comes to mind. Reconciling what is right and wrong without a universally accepted moral baseline is impossible The best we can without one is to agree to disagree.
My 92 year old mother-in-law is in he final stages of Alzheimer’s. This woman who I am, was as close to as my own mother had a brilliant mind, enormous heart, and endless energy. Now she is less than a shell of who she was. She lives in her home of 50 years with a full time caretaker. Sally and her seven living brothers and sisters pitch in. One brother and sister manage the finances, and one sister makes medical decisions.
Sally and I spent Thanksgiving Day alone with mom. Out of the blue, she called sally by her name. “Do you know who I am mom?” Sally asked.
“Of course I do honey” before she slowly faded into the darkness of disease.
It was a special moment and dinner. Something to be thankful for. Is it worth the suffering? I’m not about to make that decision for anyone else. If it were my own mom, I’d take care of her. If it was my wife Sally, I’d take care of her. Those are the choices I would make today.
Am I right? Is Charles Snelling wrong? I’m not God and He is not having this conversation; we are and we’re not Him.
At 80 years old, after 61 years of marriage, I do not blame Charles Snelling, nor do I judge him. I believe he knew exactly what he was doing with a clear mind. He wrote a beautiful story published in the NY Times.
Pulling the trigger must have been the most difficult thing he had ever done. Can you imagine yourself shooting the person you loved, adored, and spent 60 years with to end their life? Can you imagine the following moments, contemplating what you had just done before turning the gun on yourself. Who am I to judge?
March 31, 2012 at 8:37 pm
Gary S Hart One day I travelled from New York to New Mexico to visit my mother in the nursing home to which she had just been transferred because she needed 24 hour round the clock care and my sister, who had been taking care of her, could no longer do it. Her room was bare and I wanted to send some photographs to put on the table by her bed. This was long past the stage when there was supposed to “be anyone in there.” I returned to New York and pulled together some photographs of my sister, my brother, me and our father and sent them to the woman who ran the unit.
She called me the day she handed to my mother, who had long since stopped speaking, the photos, which were framed in a long rectangular frame altogether. My Mom grabbed the photos and zeroed in on the one of Dad and took her finger and rubbed it repeatedly across Dad’s lips.
We know nothing. My heart breaks for Charles Snelling and Adrienne, and I think of that beautiful film, The Notebook, with James Garner and Gena Rowlands. Life, love and people are unfathomably complicated.
March 31, 2012 at 9:45 pm
This is the ending we never hear, read or see in all of the happily ever after stories we grew up with…nor should we I guess until we’re much older. I was going to mention the Notebook book/movie which were very good in capturing the final scenes of love. Another one is 50 first dates which involves one of the lovers forgetting everything at the end of every day so the man has to woo her and court her all over again every day. While it’s an impossible premise, it’s a great reminder to us all that we need to love and woo every day while we can.
March 31, 2012 at 10:28 pm
Hello Doriano Paisano Carta I don’t know 50 First Dates, but I love the premise. Do you know Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s book Love in the Time of Cholera? It is one of my favorite books, about love at a much later stage in life, in which the guy gets the girl finally when they are both old. It never occurred to me until now that there are parallels between its premise and the Notebook, in which the guy has always had the girl but loses her to Alzheimer’s, and Snelling’s story, which is also a tender love story. Each of these stories is about love told through the eyes of those who are older. I think it’s impossibly human to want to hang onto the way things were. Perhaps for Mr. Snelling he was freezing the love between him and his wife at a moment in time. Had his and Adrienne’s story been a movie, it would have ended the way The Notebook ended. But that is the movies. Snelling chose to write his own script and write his own ending to his own love story…
March 31, 2012 at 10:40 pm
Giselle Minoli That book is on my list of must reads…didn’t they make a movie from it too?
March 31, 2012 at 11:38 pm
I could not bear to see it…ruined….
April 1, 2012 at 3:11 am
Giselle Minoli Thank you for that post.
I have no words, to tell you how much I feel sorry for your Mother and for all that you went beside her… Your Mother is close to God Giselle Minoli… God is equal to wind … You are everywhere.
It is terribly sad to read about this loving couple, but I do understand the pain and ultimately the profound despair that provoked such a tragedy.
I am a Psychologist and Customer Service Consultant specializing in client satisfaction. Follower of Carl Rogers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Rogers an influential American psychologist and among the founders of the humanistic approach to Psychology.
I am a Psychologist (Volunteer) at the http://www.institutopaulobrito.org.br/ – The Instituto Paulo Brito (in Recife – Brazil) is a nonprofit organization specializing in rehabilitation programs in memory and treating degenerative brain disorders, cognitive and behavioral.
I am determined to create a Education Program to Family (Support) – Alzheimer’s and Related Disorders. My goal is to reduce caregiver burden, offer community resources and increase skills in managing the illness.
The post, comments, article, I will study it and make a post.
Thank you all for sharing.
April 2, 2012 at 11:28 am
Romero Cavalcanti Thank you for your comment. Alzheimer’s and related Dementias are horrid diseases that ravage the individual absolutely, but also the entire family. There is no hope, no cure and it can go on for years and years. The one thing we absolutely need more of, all over the world, while no medical balm exists, is empathy, support, understanding and compassion for families and caregivers. If only everyone who reads this story were able to say, “I do understand the pain and ultimately the profound despair that provoked such a tragedy.” I wish you every success in your goals to reduce caregiver burden. It is a burden that is immeasurable from family-to-family.