Death, Dementia and Andy's Aunt Angie

Death, Dementia and Andy’s Aunt Angie

 

By Bill Rayburn

Copyright 2013

 

Comedian Denis Leary spewed a controversial rant some years ago about the injustice of death. Not a big, sprawling diatribe, as that all-encompassing subject easily warrants. Rather a very specific complaint about the many talented, consequential people who die young, often from substance abuse, while people of little use to anyone outside of their insular little circle of life go on living long if not prosperous lives. Hidden behind his ironic, caustic harangue was clearly the question of God. Does he exist? If so, why does he allow injustices such as these (and of course millions of others) to occur?

 

Andy cares for his aunt who suffers from advanced dementia. She is basically a whack job. The Bats in her Belfry not only fly right-side up, they go on their sonar-guided sorties during daylight hours. Her wiring has been pulled loose and rewired by Ray Charles wearing BBQ mittens. The mind-numbing lack of any pattern to her behavior makes caring for her exhausting. A fleeting instance of lucidity can be immediately followed by a moment of such inexplicable absurdity as to render one helpless to anticipate what might happen next.

 

The cruel irony for those who care for the mentally vacant: there is no day-to-day appreciation, no accumulation of brownie points, and no sudden inclusion into the will. She doesn’t remember what he’s done for her ten minutes ago, let alone the day-to-day effort expended by this almost holy man, his ongoing Gandhi-like performance virtually unrewarded, other than his karma count increasing exponentially.

 

Having been her carer for almost six months, he knew in some ways he’d been lucky, as she’d had only the rare obnoxious outburst. He’d been warned that the potential for outlandish and even violent behavior would increase, especially in victims as far gone as Aunt Angelina. She’d had a series of mini-strokes, as well, which affected her speech and made her very difficult to understand. Her drooling problem has gotten worse. She spits up most of what she attempts to drink, her swallowing mechanism apparently one of the things to go haywire with dementia.

 

He’d been told by his mom that her sister had been a brilliant advertising executive with an IQ approaching 150 and that she had literally been a member of Mensa. After watching Angie’s increasingly bizarre behavior over a half year, and the insipid words that came out of her mouth, he had serious doubts as to the claims of a superior acumen earlier in her life. Dementia did not make you dumb, according to most of the research he’d done on the illness. The concepts of pattern or logic may have been absent from her thought process, but there was absolutely no hint of intellectuality, cleverness or shrewdness. Andy had seen only glimpses of what the woman apparently had been. He remained skeptical about the Mensa thing.

 

For the most part, despite it all, Angie remained quite pleasant, if not painfully neurotic and compulsive. And of course, she was not going to get better, only worse.

 

One day Andy is informed via email that his best friend Roger has suffered a massive stroke, is unconscious and plugged into a dozen machines, with a dreary prognosis. Andy lives in another country, so all he can do is follow the Facebook postings provided by Roger’s mom who is graciously keeping her son’s many online friends and acquaintances updated on his condition.

 

His condition does not improve, he never regains consciousness, and Roger dies at the age of 52, leaving his wife and mother.

 

Roger was brilliant, literally. He was a Professor at Stanford who had taught English for 22 years. Two Nobel Prize winners sprang forth from his classes. He was a presence on the huge campus of Stanford, much more so than the average English professor should be. Twice he’d been voted favorite professor for the entire university.

 

And now he was dead. Suddenly, unequivocably and almost certainly unjustly.

 

Meanwhile, in Australia, Angie’s quality of life is one which you wouldn’t wish on a rodent. But she lives on; breathing, eating and contributing very little to anyone’s reality, including her own. In fact, she detracts greatly from Andy’s reality.

 

Life is unfair. Very few people would argue with that.

 

The very randomness of all that occurs around us would suggest there is no presence of a higher being watching over us.

 

Angie was devoutly religious and according to Andy’s mom, very likely remains a virgin to this day.

 

Roger was an Atheist.

 

If indeed there is a God, he has clearly made his choice in this particular instance.

 

Left to our own devices, we remain vulnerable to fate’s fickle finger. Many of us create illusions of control over our own destiny. Of course, we do control certain aspects of our lives, but the perpetual arm wrestling match between life and death has the exact same ending for every one of us.

 

We all know our life will end, yet faced with that ultimate fact of futility, most of us soldier on courageously, forging legacies, perpetuating the species, living our lives to the best of our capabilities. I fight an almost constant battle with nihilism.

 

The Rogers of the world die too soon. The Angies of the world don’t.

 

Though an enormous over-simplification, in my 53 years I have found no silver lining to that cloud.

 

In life, there is no more noble a goal, nor a more ultimately futile, pointless pursuit, than that of fairness.

 

Paul Newman is dead + Charles Manson is alive.

 

That alone makes it very difficult for me to believe in any God.

 

The defense rests…however fitfully.