Saturday was my twentieth Alzheimer’s
Walk.
In 1998 the year of my first walk, four
troublesome years had passed from the time I had noticed Jim was having trouble
remembering basic information. Jim had always had an amazing recall for numbers
and dates, but had forgotten his social security number. I thought that
strange, but I didn’t push the panic button until he admitted he didn’t know
his birth date either.
After testing, it was determined
that Jim had dementia of the Alzheimer’s type. Jim, of course, insisted he didn’t
have “that,” as he referred to it, but when we saw an article about an upcoming
“Memory Walk” in Sedalia, he wanted to go. “I have memory problems,” he said. I
had already signed up for the walk and had raised some money, but since Jim
didn’t have “that” I thought he wouldn’t want to go.
We arrived at the first walk to
discover we were the only people from Sedalia. The other walkers were Helen and
Chuck from Slater, Joetta and Penny from the Alzheimer’s chapter office in
Columbia, and Penny’s dog, Victoria. Six people and a dog, and I knew all their
names—including the dog.
Saturday, was a different story. More
than three-hundred walkers and thirty-six teams crowded into the highway
gardens. We had professional DJ’s, a super sound system, corporate sponsor
booths, volunteer shirts, a professional photographer, and pinwheel flowers. We
even had an official playlist of songs. At the first walk, the closest thing we
had to music was Helen’s hunting horn. The highlight of the walk was going into
the VFW where a veteran asked Helen to blow her horn. After she blew her horn,
they took up a collection to add to the walk total. The grand total was $600,
almost all of which I had collected from co-workers and friends.
To make my twentieth walk special, I wore my 1998 shirt and my team wore the 1999 - 2017 shirts. We knew they weren’t
exactly vintage shirts, but my niece and I laughed about struggling not to call
them vintage. Old, I guess was the correct terminology.
Yesterday, Facebook posted a “memory”
from twelve years ago, September 10, 2005. My son, daughter-in-law and their
two kids were at the Memory Walk wearing 2005 shirts. I smiled at how small the
grandkids were, and then I realized that was how small they were when Jim died
earlier that same year. It made me incredibly sad to realize that they lost
their grandpa at such a young age, and Jim missed out on seeing his grandkids
grow up. Family was everything to Jim. He loved being a dad and was over the
moon about being a grandpa.
It’s hard to believe that I’ve been
doing what I’ve been doing for twenty years. I logged my shirts before I took
them to the walk to make sure that all the years were covered. Some of the
shirts did not have a year and I had to look at photos to determine which years
went with which shirts. Then, I identified the shirt by what it said: Move; We’re
on the Move; WALK (in Alzheimer’s Logo).
After the walk changed from the
Memory Walk to the Walk to End Alzheimer’s, the message on the shirt conveyed increasingly
positive meanings. The 2017 shirt, Together We Can End Alzheimer’s, told its
own story. When we work together, we can change impossible to possible.
It is shocking to realize that my
kids are older than I was when Jim developed those first troubling symptoms. Time
passes so quickly. Lifetimes come and go. There have been times in my life when
I felt I was walking alone, but more often, I’ve relied on and been supported
by others. Together, we can accomplish anything. Together, we can accomplish
everything. Together, we can end Alzheimer’s.
Copyright © September 2017 by L.S. Fisher
#ENDALZ #GoJimsTeam
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