MARILYN "FOLLOW UP"

“The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.” (Psalm 34:18)

In late February, I wrote about my cousin Marilyn.  Marilyn  lives in Florida, is married, and has a daughter.  She is a couple of years older than I am.  I have MANY cousins, but Marilyn stands out as a great person.  First, she’s very good looking.  She could have been a professional model.  Secondly, she has a fine personality and good sense of humor.  Third, she is a hard working person, and finally, she is a very caring person.  Marilyn was born on Feb. 29, 1952.  She’s a “Leap Year Baby”.  Since this is a leap year, I thought it would be really cool for a bunch of folks to e-mail her and wish her a Happy Birthday.  I put out one of my famous mass e-mailings in February, encouraging people to do exactly that.  I posted a tribute to her on the blog in honor of her birthday.  I also sent Marilyn a very warm and special birthday e-mail.  If you happen to be one of the people who sent birthday greetings to Marilyn, then you probably wondered why she did not send you a reply or a “thank you”.  Here is the rest of the story:

Over a year ago, Marilyn e-mailed me that she’d been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease.  That seemed unthinkable to me.  We exchanged e-mails pretty often.  Everything seemed fine.  And, she seemed say too young for Alzheimer’s Disease.  (You may know that my later father had Alzheimer’s Disease and ended up on the locked unit of a nursing home.)  I asked Marilyn to call me and we talked.  At that time she seemed fine.  I could not detect ANY indication of dementia.  She said she’d been getting very confused counting change and it bothered her enough to have it checked out.  A doctor had given her some difficult puzzle to put together  within a certain period of time...and when she couldn’t do it, he pronounced her as having Alzheimer’s Disease.

I encouraged her that the diagnosis seemed crazy and that she needed to get a second opinion.  She told me that some of her friends had told her the same thing.  We continued to share e-mails throughout 2007, and it definitely appeared that Marilyn had been misdiagnosed.

I really got excited about Marilyn’s February 29 birthday and I thought she’d get a  big kick out of getting scores (maybe even hundreds) of well-wishing e-mails on the occasion of her special birthday.  When she did not respond to my own special birthday e-mail, (because she also has an AOL screen name) I checked through AOL to see if she’d been reading the e-mails I’d been sending to her.  At that time, in early March, I was shocked that Marilyn had not opened any of my e-mails for at least the previous 5 weeks.  I could not recall getting an e-mail from her since mid-December.  I sent a couple of “PLEASE RESPOND” e-mails which went unanswered.  Marilyn has 4 siblings. I had the e-mail address of her older sister Jeanne (who is a former Jeopardy champion-no kidding!) and so I e-mailed Jeanne to ask if she knew if Marilyn was O.K.  Jeanne wrote back that Marilyn had been having some “physical challenges” but that she was essentially O.K. and that she was still using the same e-mail address.  Jeanne also e-mailed me Marilyn’s phone number.  The next morning, I phoned Marilyn.

The Marilyn who spoke to me on the phone in early March 2008 was not the one who’d spoken to me a little over a year earlier.  Marilyn definitely knew who I was.  She was very friendly.  But she sounded different.  She spoke very slowly...VERY SLOWLY...like a first-grader reciting a poem at a parent’s visiting day or something like that.  She was very warm and very friendly.  She told he she still has the same e-mail address and regularly checks her e-mail.  She could not understand what I was talking about (regarding the unanswered e-mails).  After we hung up, I was fighting back the tears.  

I just knew she hadn’t been checking her e-mails, but she THOUGHT she had.  It was like I was talking to a six-year-old Marilyn....not a 56-year-old.  I wrote back to Jeanne about what happened and I did not get a reply.  I do know hold that against Jeanne in any way.  I suspect it was just too painful for her to write about it.

Today, I got an e-mail from Marilyn’s younger sister Patty.  Patty put out a mass e-mail to the family telling them of Marilyn’s dementia, and asking that people do not e-mail Marilyn because she never goes to her computer or e-mail.  Patty did encourage us to telephone her.  Patty spoke of Marilyn’s deterioration, but said she physically looks great.  She described her as speaking very slowly (what I experienced when I last spoke to her).  It  was obvious that the mass e-mailing was VERY painful for Patty to write.  I can imagine tears falling down her cheeks as she wrote it.  I made it a point to write a very warm e-mail back to Patty, sharing what I shared in this posting, and commending her courage and love for writing that very difficult e-mail.

Yesterday I learned that a ministerial colleague has cancer in an advanced stage.  Today, I kind of got emotionally slapped in the face with the tragedy of Marilyn’s Alzheimer’s Disease.  I think a lot of Marilyn and so it’s very hard to think about what she’s going through and where this is all headed.  Today is my day off.  I’ve actually been doing a lot of “blue collar” work around the house, and I went into the church office for awhile to take care of some stuff that just couldn’t wait until tomorrow.  I love Jesus as much as I ever have and I’m as committed to the Lord and ministry as I’ve ever been.  I’m just kind of sad today.  Life is not fair...