All our determination doesn't matter
Eviction notice served as part of Patten project
Please consider supporting The Front Page with a paid subscription: HERE
In the mornings, I get up early to write. Bella sleeps, sometimes quietly but sometimes restlessly, getting up every half an hour to peek into the office.
“It’s early, Honey,” I say. “Come on back to bed. It’s only 5 o’clock. I’ll work for another hour or so, then I’ll come in and read my book, OK?”
“Will you lay down with me?” she says, curling under the covers.
“Yes, in a little bit,” I say.
During the day, she oscillates between agitation and exhaustion.
When we’re walking, she wants to get home to sit down and close her eyes. But when she wakes, she wants to go back out.
She can’t read, the way I do off and on all day on my phone. We don’t talk a lot, because the sense gets lost between the first sentence and the second.
Alzheimer’s has trapped us in this space between comprehension and confusion, connection and loss.
Bella can’t understand, can’t process, can’t engage with the activities she used to, but the urge to enjoy herself remains.
“Let’s go out and have fun,” she says.
“Doing what?” I say.
Wednesday, we took a walk on the Halfway Brook Trail, and, on the way home, detoured to Stewart’s on Corinth Road for ice cream cones.
She asked me a question as we drove: “Can you put poop in a bag and put it in the woods?”
“No, you have to throw it in a trash can. Or bring it home and throw it away. Or,” I said, “put it on a shelf and display it like a trophy.”
Bella was quiet for a few moments.
“You’re not very nice,” she said. “Everyone thinks you’re so great but you’re not.”
When we got to Stewart’s, she walked away from me in the parking lot, fuming, and I followed her around the gas pumps.
“You can’t go for a walk here,” I said. “These are big roads. It’s dangerous. I’ll take you home, if you want, and you can walk around the neighborhood.”
I held her by the shoulder.
“Leave me alone,” she said.
“I’ll have to call the police,” I said.
I dialed 911 after she walked out onto Big Bay Road, and the tall, young, easygoing trooper who came coaxed her into cooperating.
Back home, she slept after a little while, and her mood changed.
“I can’t believe I was fighting with a police officer,” she said, looking sly.
She won’t concede anything to the disease that tortures her with delusions of abusive bullies and loved ones who abandon her and a “home” she can never find.
She struggles against the drugs that make her sleep when she wants to get going and make her angry when she wants to be kind.
A physician assistant with Hudson Headwaters’ Homeward Bound program, which visits at home patients with chronic and serious illnesses, was at our house on Thursday.
Bella had injured her shoulder in a fall but refused to wear the sling the hospital gave us, and I was telling Sean, the physician assistant, a story about how she broke her arm when we lived in Malone.
“She was cross-country skiing, and her pole stuck in the snow and pulled her back,” I said, demonstrating how her arm had twisted behind her as she fell.
“Oh, falling back on it,” said Sean.
“It was a spiral fracture,” I said. “The nurse at the hospital said it was the worst break she’d ever seen.
“She went to Burlington and the doctors said they should put a plate in her arm, with screws holding the bone together, and Bella said ‘no, I’m not doing that.’
“So the doctors said the other option was to put on a flexible cast, and they could squeeze her arm with their hands to push the bone back together, and she’d have to come back once a week or so for a couple of months so they could squeeze it again, and every visit would be extremely painful. And she said, ‘OK.’”
When Bella fell a few years ago on an icy sidewalk and dislocated her shoulder, she somehow jammed it back in, then walked home and waited for me to return from work and take her to the ER.
She says no to Novocaine when she gets her teeth drilled by the dentist.
But her fierce determination is no help against Alzheimer’s, which is slow but unstoppable — and painless, in a physical way.
Credit is due
Several readers praised my reporting for the column on Thursday, which included site plan documents for the 20-unit apartment building Chris Patten built in 2021 between Goodwin Avenue and Union Street. But the credit for knowing how to find those documents belongs to a longtime friend of our family’s who is an urban planner who works downstate. She was the one who, after reading my previous posts on the Patten projects, sent me a link to the Planning Board’s agenda packet.
Resignation
News broke late this past week that Ethan Hall, an architect who works for Rucinski Hall Architecture in Glens Falls, had resigned from the Planning Board. Hall had been on the board for years and was its chairman when he stepped down.
The resignation followed my suggestion in a recent post that Hall had a prohibited conflict of interest, per Section 805-A of the state’s general municipal law, Chapter 24, Article 18, which says, “no municipal officer or employee shall receive, or enter into any agreement, express or implied, for compensation for services to be rendered in relation to any matter before any municipal agency of which he is an officer, member or employee …”
Other people had taken note of Hall’s dual loyalties over the years, and several mentioned it to me. The law clearly prohibits such conflicts, and this one became hard to overlook, because of all the paid work Hall has been doing in the city.
Attention has focused on Hall also because the bland, blockish nature of his work for Patten strikes many city residents as incompatible with the attractive, historic nature of downtown Glens Falls.
Eviction
Joann Sullivan, a resident of 391 Glen St., which would be demolished as part of the apartment complex plan presented by Chris Patten to the Glens Falls Planning Board, said Saturday she has received an eviction notice.
Sullivan said the notice came from 1 Washington Street Development, telling her she would have to leave the premises by Nov. 30.
Sullivan is one of two residents out of six apartments in 391 Glen St. — the other four are empty. One apartment in the next-door building, 399 Glen St., which plans for the project also call for demolishing, is also occupied.
She pays only $525 a month, Sullivan said, and her rent hasn’t gone up during the more than 10 years she has lived in the building.
She predicted she won’t be able to find another apartment at a comparable price, but she wants to stay in Glens Falls.
She works as a cashier at Lowe’s but two years ago was out of work for a year while being treated for breast cancer.
“I’ve had five surgeries in the past two and a half years,” she said, adding that she had used up her savings during her recovery.
Yellow
In late summer, a profusion of yellow erupts from tall flowers that have grown all around our house. I never planted them, but I love the bright color they bring to the season.
My stepfather is at a similar stage to Bella. (Although you have been comforting and supporting her much longer). The paranoia is really hard and it breaks your heart when they think that someone is being mean or controlling when they aren't. They have a totally different perspective on the world now and all I can think is how frightening that must be for them. Home is a feeling and they keep searching for that place. Sometimes I think "home" is just that place of safety in their mind that they want to access again because the world keeps changing on them. Your love is a blessing to Bella.
Three of my wife's family members have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. It is awful to see loved ones lose their sense of self and knowledge of the everyday. Maintaining a sense of humor, knowing when to ask for help, and making sure you take care of yourself physically, mentally and emotionally are essential to being a caregiver. Thank you for sharing yours and Bella's experiences.