Photograph and Memories

Photograph And Memories

By

Miles Woolley

My beautiful wife has an interesting history of high achievement in her education and intellectual advancement. She started her adult life with a bachelor’s degree in nursing and served in the Army Nurse Corps earning the rank of First Lieutenant. Following that, she returned to college as a single mother to earn her master’s degree in nursing with a focus on psychiatry and specializing in adolescent behavior. She then earned a certification in nursing called Clinical Nurse Specalist. Subsequently, she continued her academic climb to earn the Advanced Registered Nurse Specialist. The ARNP title is about as high as one can go in nursing rankings.

She did not stop there, however, because she continued her ascension with a doctorate in education and human resource development. Her doctorate helped her to earn the very prestigious award, an endowed chair, at the college of nursing where she became a full professor and department chair. Eventually, she became an assistant dean of education at another university where she helped direct the education of many nursing students.

Her brilliance shined at her career and of course at home. My wife made me a better person by showing and giving unconditional love. I also learned forgiveness from her. She was always on top of every important topic and involved in every important decision we made. She read the newspaper from cover to cover every day and followed the news and politics closely. She always had one or more books going. Her intelligence, along with her caring heart defined her. There is an expression that is used as sarcasm or as a putdown of a person that goes something like “You are always the smartest person in the room.” It is meant to put people in their place who seem to be overbearing with perceived intelligence. In my wife’s case, it was often an accurate assessment of her. Get the picture? That is the point.

Get that picture of my wife and imagine holding it in your hand or placing it somewhere you can easily look at it from time to time. Now imagine taking a close look at hat picture and noticing there is a tiny hole in it. It is as if someone took a pin and poked a hole in the picture. You have no idea how it happened or for how long the hole was there. If you hold the picture to a light; you see a bright dot in her image representing a space where there once was a part of her image. Part of her is now missing.

One tiny pinhole in an image is hardly noticeable. A few weeks later, however, another pinhole appears. In time, more little holes appear in her picture. When held to the light, they do not seem to be in any pattern – just random holes. There is no logic to the placement nor the timing of the holes. It just seems the holes are increasing and the light that shines through them is getting brighter. Eventually, the holes are beginning to dominate the picture. There are more holes than image.

That is the perfect metaphor of having a loved one suffering with dementia. The undamaged picture was my wife before being afflicted with frontotemporal dementia. The tiny pinholes represent the progression of the disease. The light that shines through the pinholes is my memory of her before the dementia started to overpower the brilliant person she was.

I continue to love her without condition. Learning unconditional love from her was her greatest gift to me. My fears now are the continuous destruction of her picture, meaning the progression of her disease and that the light that shines through, representing my memories of her, will fade. If the image of her must disappear, at least please let the light continue to shine brightly.