Anger is always there with Alzheimer's

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A friend who is also married to someone with a brain disorder called the other day with a question.

“What do you do when you get mad?” she said.

Alzheimer’s is a banquet of frustration, with annoyance and anger always on the plate.

I could get annoyed, I tell myself 10 times a day — when Bella can’t figure out how to get out of the car; or when she stands by the car door and asks, “Am I getting out?” and when I say “yes,” she climbs back in; when I take her sneakers off so she can change her leggings, but once the leggings are off, she wants them back on; when she agrees to watch TV but after 10 minutes wants to go out, and when we go for a walk, after 10 minutes, she wants to go home.

But I don’t shout or shake my head or heave a big sigh.

“Here you go,” I say, untangling her seatbelt.

“Come with me,” I say, gesturing her away from the car door.

“You want to put them back on?” I say, about the leggings. “Give me your foot.”

I have time in my days; I might as well use it on repetitions and reassurances. I’m not happy about it, though — I admit that.

I do get mad sometimes, and when I do, it feels, in my anger, I’m reaching out for the Bella whom I met and loved and has disappeared — like I’m waving my arms around in a dark closet as I look for her and call out.

“I want to get earrings,” she said Tuesday, as we were driving down to spend the morning in Saratoga Springs.

“You have a lot of earrings at home,” I said.

“No, I don’t,” she said, then shut up and refused to talk to me.

“If you’re giving me the silent treatment, I’m going to turn around. I’m not driving down to Saratoga with you if you’re not talking to me,” I said.

I turned around at Exit 16 and started back, but she spoke before we reached Exit 17.

“I apologize,” she said.

“All right. Let’s go to Saratoga then,” I said.

I got mad on Friday, too, after she walked away from me in the parking lot of the Aviation Road Stewart’s, back into the Maple Wood apartments complex, then out onto the road, ignoring my pleas to get back in the car.

She said something critical about me after we finally got home.

“I just chased you around Aviation Road for 45 minutes, after you walked away from the Stewart’s for no reason, where we went because you wanted a cold drink, and you wouldn’t get in the car or listen to me, and I had to get Ringo and follow you around, afraid you were going to walk into the road. Do you have any idea what it’s like to be me in this situation?”

She looked confused.

“Sit by yourself for awhile,” I said, and went outside and mowed the lawn, a chore I’d been wanting to get done for at least a week.

After all of this, when we were sitting at the butcher block and drinking cold cans of sparkling water, she apologized again.

“It’s hard,” I said. “It’s hard to be us. It’s hard for both of us. I’m sorry I got so mad, but sometimes, I can’t help it.”

Sometimes, I don’t squelch it. And still sometimes, as I thrash around in anger, I find her hand.

Bella sits at a table on the sidewalk Friday outside Spot Coffee.

Readings

I’ve read several books since the last time I did a book review, but I’m going to save them for later and mention today a couple of other Substack newsletters I think are excellent.

The first is “American Crisis,” a newsletter and podcast by Margaret Sullivan, the former editor of the Buffalo News and former ombudsman for the New York Times. (The Times no longer has an ombudsman, unfortunately.) Sullivan has been focusing on media coverage of the presidential candidates and the election, in particular the tendency of the biggest and most influential newspapers, such as the New York Times, to engage in a constant process of false equivalence — seeking, in the name of “fairness,” to balance behavior by Donald Trump, his aides and followers that is far beyond the pale with quite normal and sane behavior by Democrats, under the premise that they are equivalent.

Her column this week is about what has been called “sanewashing,” the translation by journalists of disturbing nonsense spouted by Trump into comprehensible thoughts and policies. Thus, journalists, in the name of “objectivity,” fail to report the truth of Trump’s alarming mental state — both in terms of cognitive confusion and bloody-mindedness — and, by mistranslating his rants into reason, make him seem reasonable.

The second is “The Upstate American” by Rex Smith, former editor of the Times Union, whose column is both erudite and accessible, moving easily from, for example, a rule about hat-wearing at a country club to a discussion of the economy, inflation, immigration, climate change and something called “the availability heuristic,” a much less daunting concept than it sounds, at least as Smith describes it.

We worry about the wrong things