Sunday, April 01, 2007

Richard and Adamarie married 35 years ago. He is 80, tall and handsome with wavy white hair and a deep but gentle voice. She is 70, with only a smattering of gray in her dark brown hair and an expression that I believe never strays far from sweet.

Adamarie is suffering from memory loss. Richard won't allow the label Alzheimer's, or even dementia. Apparently, the couple's doctor has not yet uttered those words either, but it lurks among the three of them, eager to make an entrance. Richard is barring the door.

I enrolled both of them in our Medicare program Friday. They live in a small apartment in a low-income housing complex. I expected something neat but shabby, but instead, I was welcomed into a home overflowing with antiques, decorated with Victorian flair. It also overflowed with love, and I felt its embrace before I found a seat on the couch.

We talked very little of business. Instead, with a little encouragement from me, they talked of their lives together, how lucky they had been to find one another, how wonderful those 35 years.

"She's my reason for living," he said. "God knew was he was doing when he sent her to me.

Richard had been deathly ill a year before. "When I was in the hospital, I hallucinated that she had died."

His eyes filled with tears. "It haunts me to this day."

Now, Adamarie was ill. He would do everything humanly possible, he said, to keep her healthy.

She smiled, shook her head and turned to me. "I'm blessed. I am blessed with this man."

Not being particularly religious, I normally found frequent references to "blessings" and divine intervention a bit trite and annoying. But not from this couple. This was part of their story, part of who they were. From them, it sounded perfectly natural. It lent the story of their live the mystical shine it merited.

Richard told me about the vitamin supplements they were taking to help combat her memory loss. They had purchased an inversion table, and twice a day, Adamarie hung upside down from it with the aim of keeping the blood circulating in her brain. He massaged her twice daily, he said, again with the same purpose.

Their doctor, he said, had asked permission to share their story at an Alzheimer's convention he was leading. At first, Richard had hesitated. It was, after all, a convention about the word they did not use. But the doctor reassured him theirs was a story of inspiration. They had managed to not only stop Adamarie's memory loss, but slowly, to reverse it, and that, he said, made it a story worth sharing.

"I want to tell them that there is one reason for her success," the doctor said. "And that is unconditional love."

"I thought that was quite a compliment," said Richard, smiling at Adamarie, who sat next to me on the couch.

She turned toward me, and patted my knee. "Blessed, I tell you."

I stayed with them for almost two hours. Richard, a former professional singer, played a tape of one of his performances. They showed me family photographs, offered me tea and asked me about my own family. They told me to stop by some time at the end of a hard day and they would give me "something stronger than tea." Come for dinner, they urged me. Come anytime.

Rarely do I stay so long at one call, but the truth was, I was basking in the happy atmosphere of this home, witnessing the apparent miracle of the kind of unconditional love that rarely shows its face to the world.

At the end, our conversation turned at last to the reason for my visit. We filled out the application. I asked Adamarie for her birthday. "May 25 -" she stopped. The sweet expression fell away for a moment, replaced by confusion. "1927?" she faltered.

Her eyes sought, and found, her husband's. He fixed her with a steady, reassuring gaze.

"No, no, my dear," he said. "1937."

Her furrowed brow relaxed. Her smile, and peaceful expression, returned.

"Yes, of course," she said, looking back to me. "1937."

She looked at him and whispered a single word; one I was not meant to hear. "Blessed."

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