ReadersDigestAustraliaNewZealand-March2018

March• 2018 | 119

READER’S DIGEST

withered person with the scrambled

mind marooned in a nursing home.

But there is also the beginning, the

waiting period. Now this was Geri

Taylor. Waiting.

SHE NEVER CRIED

Geri remained energised, in control,

the silent attack on her brain not yet in

full force. But what about next month?

Next year? The disease would be there.
It nicks away at you, its progress messy
and unpredictable.
“The beginning is like purgatory,”
she said later. “It’s kind of a grace pe-
riod. You’re waiting for something.
Something you don’t want to come.
It’s like a before-hell purgatory.”
Geri is an effervescent woman,
with a round face and a froth of swirl-
ing hair. In her healthcare career, she
had seen Alzheimer’s in action. Now
she would live it. Those who learn
they have the disease often sink into
a piercing black grief. They try to
camouflage their symptoms from the
world as they back-pedal from life. But
Geri pictured Alzheimer’s differently,
with defiance and through a dispas-
sionate, unblinking lens.
Crossing into the pitted terrain of

Alzheimer’s made her question her

purpose. Her career was concluded.

Mortality was pressing in. Was she

limited to backward glances, or could

this be a new beginning?

At first her husband had trouble ad-

justing. He wouldn’t meet her eyes. He

drew away. Jim is two years younger

than Geri, a lanky, warm-voiced man.

To unfreeze the chill between them, it

took a pep talk that put the present in

softer perspective. Geri told him, “This

is something that is going to develop,

but it hasn’t developed yet.”

Yes, something big had happened.

Yet they were still alive. Still together,

with more mileage in their future.

So they moved forwards into their re-

ordered lives.

Many think of Alzheimer’s as a

memory disease, but its awful mys-

teries involve more than that. Not only

was her memory leaving her, but also

what is called ‘executive function’.You

lose the sequence of steps in a pro-

cess, like a man who begins shaving

before applying shaving cream.

She couldn’t know the speed of her

decline. It is different with everyone.

The impact, she learned, in part ap-

pears determined by the amount of

“THEBEGINNINGISLIKEPURGATORY,”

GERI SAID. “IT’S KIND OF A GR ACE PERIOD.

YOU’RE WAITING FOR SOMETHING”