Decades of Back Stories

Our wonderful celebration felt like "Old Home Week" or a school reunion for a truly special organization. Warm feelings and lively conversations flowed throughout the evening. Several of us received awards but everyone in the room deserved acknowledgment, having helped shape ElderHealth Northwest into the venerable institution that it is today.

In reflecting back over the years, I'm so touched by the impact we have had on thousands and thousands of lives. Some memories surface:

• A husband whose wife suffers from early-onset Alzheimer's disease. He decides to move her into a dementia unit when he can no longer manage her care, but he can't bring himself to take her there. I drive her, and for some reason she is quite peaceful in the car. Without anguish or anxiety, she enters her new room where she finds her family waiting to greet her. Her husband goes on to form the organization now known as the Alzheimer's Association - Western and Central Washington State Chapter.

• A man who has cerebral palsy. He lives in a group home and attends one of our adult day health programs for younger adults. He has difficulty with balance and walking and is also very difficult to understand when talking. With a staff member hanging on to his gait belt to make sure he doesn't fall, he finds his way to my office (not an easy task), sits down, and tries valiantly to communicate something to me. After many tries I put a pad of paper in front of him and he scrawls the letters WWF on the notepad. I know (having raised a boy, now a young man) that stands for the "World Wrestling Federation" and ask him if that is what he means. He nods vigorously and points to me saying, "You tickets me." I'm impressed that he went to all this effort and that he figured out that I might have the resources and inclination to help out. I spend all morning the next day with Ticketmaster purchasing his accessible seat plus companion seats which are snatched up by two young staff members eager to take him. Four hours on the phone, $192 dollars for three tickets. The look on his face when I tell him he's going to the match: priceless.

• An elderly couple, the husband lovingly caring for his wife. She attended one of our adult day health centers until the day she died. A few years later his family asked for our help to care for him as well. Once I see him walking, stooped over, while several of our young women staffers come over to say hello and hug him. After several encounters like that he looks up at me, smiles and says, "I'm one lucky stiff!" He lived to be 105 and achieved his goal of being alive in three centuries.

Spring 2008 Love in the Time of Alzheimer's

Fall 2007 Making the Invisible Visible

April 2007 The Last Time I Saw Mary

April 2006 The Constancy of Sports in our Lives

November 2005 Scenes from the Middle of the Night at Gaffney House

December 2004 I can't tell you how much I love living...where?