Sentimental Journey

My mom has two older brothers, my Uncle Ciro, the oldest, and my Uncle Jerry. Over the last few years my Uncle Jerry has been getting a little forgetful in his old age. I don't know if it's a touch of senility or early signs of Alzheimer's, which claimed another uncle's life several years ago after reducing him to a shell of the man my aunt married. It started small with my Uncle Jerry, when my dad and I saw him at a feast we were playing at and he took a minute to recognize us. Over time it progressed to losing his train of thought in the middle of a story and lately, completely losing track of the time or going an entire week without noticing his answering machine was full.

He never married and, after my grandmother passed away, continued to live in her house, which my Uncle Ciro was paying for. A few years ago they opted to sell the house, which was becoming too much for my Uncle Jerry to take care of, and move him into an apartment with assisted living for seniors. It was a difficult adjustment, and in truth he remained in his house for as long as possible before it was sold, even though he had already gotten the apartment and was paying rent on it.

For the most part he's been self-sufficient, but since he's as forgetful with the mail as he is with the phone, my other uncle will visit his brother regularly to check for any bills, sometimes found stuffed in desk drawers. The older uncle is over 80, and can't be constantly checking in on his brother. Meanwhile, my Uncle Jerry still has friends that depend on him for rides, scary as that may seem. He has his moments of lucidity, though those are fading. The other day when talking to my Uncle Ciro, he got lost in the middle of a story about taking his friend to the hospital. “Which hospital? Did you pick him up?” asked Uncle Ciro. “I don't know! The big one! On the road!”

Uncle Ciro called my mom with this story, and she then phoned Uncle Jerry and tried to get more information, to see if he'd stranded some old man and some undisclosed hospital. She managed to get the guy's daughter's name for my Uncle Ciro, and he called her to ascertain that her father had indeed gotten home, either by his own means or Uncle Jerry had picked him up and simply forgotten. And that's where the trouble started.

Uncle Jerry forgets days and hours. He sometimes will go to sleep in the middle of the day thinking it's night. Something triggered the memory of his friend the next day, and he set out to pick him up from the hospital, and got very, very lost. I found a message when I got back to my office after lunch, one of my father's trademark statements of fact: “[MCF], this is your dad. Your mom got a call from the cops; Uncle Jerry was found in Staten Island. Uncle Ciro is coming over and we're going to get him. So if we're not home, you know where we are.”

How's that for a message? Staten Island?! That's well over an hour from where my Uncle lives, and includes driving over a bridge and paying a toll. The bit about the cop and “finding” my uncle was somewhat scary, too. I immediately phoned home and managed to catch my mom as they were heading out the door. Apparently my uncle was okay, but somehow got all the way to Staten Island before he realized he was lost. He crossed a median in the process of a u-turn, nearly causing an accident and attracting the attention of a police officer who pulled him over and found him to be disoriented. Thank God he must have had my mom's telephone number on him, or remembered it in a moment of clarity. I was a bit worried about the rest of my elderly relatives, especially my dad who just got out of a nursing home, trekking out there by themselves, but my mom insisted I not blow off my meetings and that they'd be fine. To make a long story slightly less long, they found him in the emergency room of a hospital, and before it got dark my Uncle Ciro insisted my parents drive back with Uncle Jerry's car, which they had to get out of an impound yard. My mom drove, and now we have four cars in the driveway.

A few hours later, my Uncle Ciro called to say they were home, that nothing physically wrong had been found with Uncle Jerry and they released him. He's back home, and we've still got the car for now. It's kind of scary the things we face as we get older, and I can't believe how far my uncle got in that state. My mom and my other uncle checked out a nursing home a few weeks ago, and it's pretty clear that my Uncle Jerry needs to be monitored in such an environment. I guess it remains to be seen if he'll even get to keep his license. My mom said he didn't seem too distressed, and was even laughing about the whole incident. I think, or rather I hope, that these things are harder on the family than the affected relative. A state of blissful ignorance is preferable to being trapped inside and aware of your actions, helpless to change or control them.

I still wonder why he went to Staten Island. I know how far that journey is. Did he really think that was where he dropped his buddy at the hospital? Was he remembering another trip from his past, and reliving some dormant bit of travel? We may never know, any more than I know what crazy message is going to be on my answering machine next...