This post is about my experiences of the past year and a half with one man and his family. Thanks for reading.

I met Milt and his daughter in September of 2007. They had advertised for a companion/PCA, I answered the ad, and it was just one of those things. They had already interviewed 12 people, had decided who to hire, but his daughter, Jen, heard my message and decided to fit me in for an interview.I was hired. It was meant to be.

Milt is a retired social worker and scholar with a PhD. from Columbia. He is a careful man - I like to think of him as a typical New Yorker of a certain age. He married and had two daughters, but the marriage failed and he lived alone for many years, intent on his work and his activism in several progressive groups; one that still sends him literature is the Center for Ethical Thought.

I was hired to work two four hour shifts two afternoons a week, for which I would be compensated very generously. Milt was living in an assisted care facility - kind of a retirement home, but with more personal care ; but NOT a nursing home. He had his own small apartment, ate meals in the dining room with other residents.

(If you don't know about these places, you should. The transitional care industry is huge, and you may find yourself considering one of these facilities for your loved ones. Or, y'know, yourself. I think they are great for some people and not right at all for others. Milt was acceptant of being at the Arbors; happiness has never been his middle name, so content was actually a very good thing!)

At first our relationship was strained - getting to know each other can be hard when there's an obvious "I'm paid to be with you." element. But we had a lot in common - one of the first things I did was bring him my New Yorker's after I had finished reading them, which he appreciated. He had kept up his subscription to the Times. The election season was heating up, so we had a lot to talk about.

Also, we live in an incredible place with four colleges and a major university, and cultural offerings are like plucking  feathers from a molting chicken. There's literally an abundance of choices. We went to plays and concerts and lectures on the weekends. During the week we went to galleries and museums.And it's a place of natural beauty, which is also very accessable. So we took long walks on the bike paths, or on different campuses.

I was thrilled with my job, and they were thrilled with me. Imagine being praised for seeking out an amazing concert or play, which I was being paid to attend and reimbursed for the ticket, because I was putting so much thought into options for our afternoons! I was sort of like, um....it's not that hard to read the papers! Never mind how much fun we were having!

Naturally, we grew quite close during this time. All three of us. As my relationship with Milt grew and developed, my relationship with Jen also grew. We started talking on the phone regularly about different aspects of her fathers illness, especially as slight signs of deterioration began to occur. There were a few issues of forgetfulness, of course. And he became more frail - dizzy spells, more tiredness. But we were still keeping up a pretty active schedule.

It's hard to remember when things began to change. (HA! It's hard to remember! )When exactly DID the New Yorker become too much?  I remember when he told me he didn't need it anymore, but he was still busy with the NY Times. Unless you are with someone every day, those little changes are so subtle. Plus, y'know, was I, or Jen, ready to accept that he might be losing the ability to READ?

And the natural question would be: was HE ready to lose the ability to read? But that's not how it works. Having the newspaper in his hands and figuring out the headlines might have been vital, until just having the familiar newspaper in his hands was vital. At first, I think he did say that the New Yorker's were piling up. Then looked me in the eye and gave me a half smile.

There was a period of being in cahoots against Alzheimer's.  Obviously, he knew exactly what was going on. I think he would have committed suicide upon diagnosis (or about when the true dementia set in) except for his love for his daughters.

It's a very precious time, that window of deterioration, if the person is not just pissed off and angry and frustrated. Milt was certainly all of those things, but he also knew that although his future was inevitable, his present was still available. So we managed to do many, many things.

Some stuff is really funny - like taking him to see "Vicky, Christina, Barcelona" which I had advertised to him as a Woody Allen film. Oh, boy. I think he just closed his eyes at some point, and on our way back to the car said, shaking his head;" I don't think that was Woody Allen.". I was, of course, still a little red faced at sitting through the sex scenes while glancing over at him.

It's hard to choose my favorite afternoon with Milt. I guess all the funny ones are most precious, because his smile is so rare. So I love making him laugh. We stormed out of a really bad play once. Well, we carefully managed to negotiate our way out, probably quite slowly, at intermission. But I like to think we stormed out, because it was a really bad play. And once we were out of there he said: "Whew! I didn't like that at all." Me neither!  We probably went to have a bagel to recover.

I  loved our walks - in the old days with Milt, we would walk in a stiff breeze on a mild winter day. There was always something to talk about, and there was always the comfort of silence together.  

 I don't know what's going on in a brain riddled by Alzheimers. I do know that Alzheimers literally eats away at the mind. The only way to truly diagnose it is through an autopsy. So, when we took those walks later into his progression, I was supporting him more. And the sunlight through the trees might be  too dazzling. Or the endless path in front of us, with no familiar touchstones, might make him stop. "Where are we going? Where are you taking me?"

Where before he would feel joy and notice a certain knot of bark on a tree, or the lily pads in the pond, now everything was the deep woods.

 We still went to concerts, but I was running damage control from the moment we arrived. I would sit him down, explain what I was going to do, go to the box office, explain the situation ie dementia and dizzy spells, need to be near an exit, where are the bathrooms, is there exit lighting...I guess I was pretty demanding. But every minute of music, art, drama, stimulation, community seemed like the most vital drug for me to administer. If even one phrase or note gets to you through your awful disease, I have done my job, I said to myself.

I felt like I was his warrior princess, out to slay any dragon that might prevent us from being out in the community. A radical community activist for one Alzheimers victim. (And former radical community activist!) And he trusted me. He was never much of a talker - a man of careful, chosen words - and now he was not completing sentences. So I was trying to interpret him to me, and us to the world, and all we had, sometimes, was a meaningful look, or a nod. A raised eyebrow - he's still good at that.

Milt fell in early March, was hospitalized for less than a week, and was transferred to a Center for Extended Care. A nursing home. On the Dharma unit. Dementia and Alzheimers. Dharma! What does that mean? What sort of dharma is at play for formerly vibrant people who are slowly losing their minds?

The staff on the Dharma unit are great - and, Milt is different. I tried so hard, at first, not to accept that this might be a progression for him. No way should he be in a nursing home. He was walking around on his own before he fell! He was annoying people because he couldn't find his room at the care facility!

He had just moved to the Alzheimer's/dementia ward there! The Reflections unit! Good god, who comes up with this stuff. Reflections, Dharma ? Nobody's reflecting in Reflections - that's sort of the main symptom of dementia - no reflection!

I have this urge to do battle for him, but it's hard to get him to walk without support. It's been two months, and he is getting better, but we're never going to go for a walk again. I am taking him to a concert this weekend. A van with wheelchair access picks us up and drops us off. I don't know how Milt will feel when we get there. I hope he likes it. I hope he knows there is a world still available to him beyond the belted chair in front of the television on the Dharma unit.

When I see him during the week, I wheel him to a quieter place. We toss a plastic ball that's marked as earth back and forth. I help him do some arm exercises. He can't do it on his own. His hands flutter in front of his chest like agitated birds. I take his hands in mine, and look at him.Sometimes he speaks, but I can't understand. So we just look at each other.

His eyes are so clear, and so open - like he's stunned, like he needs to say something really important. Something he can't quite remember. It's on the tip of his tongue. His hands want to take off in flight. I hold them, crossed against my chest. He squeezes so tight it almost hurts.

There's only so much I can do for him now - and I find it offensive that I can't have him back like he was before he fell. I'm mad about that. I want him back.

I could not have done this job without allowing myself to fully love him. Now I'm learning how to let go, painfully, one step at a time.

(P.S. I took him to the concert this afternoon. It was a youth chorus form here with a visiting chorus from Chicago. Very uplifting - and Milt smiled most of the way through. We won today.)