Here’s a link to a two minute recording of Robert Patterson and his wife Karen talking about his Alzheimers. I have played it over and over, it’s the most moving piece.

The conversation had me remembering the first Process Work workshop I attended. There was an exercise the participants did that stayed with me. It was a meditative exercise, a series of steps and reflections. Each of us had to imagine ourselves at the end of our happy lives and look back at what had been important to us.

Career was paramount for me back then. I was only at the workshop with a group I worked with because we hoped to bring to some new thinking to our workplace. Imagining myself at 90 and pondering on what had been important was revelatory. Work did not feature, just people, well Mottsu in particular. Important to me were relationships and people. It was obviously something I believed but I hadn’t ever quite realised, or let myself realise. The knowledge delighted me.

When I came home I talked Mottsu through the same exercise, only he wasn’t delighted, he was half-hearted at best. It was some time later after we visited a friend in hospital that Mottsu mentioned the exercise. The projection into the future had troubled him and he hadn’t been able to picture himself as old and content, only old and ailing.

Decrepit.

Seeing himself as ill and alone he had been unable to recall joy in his life.

Overwhelmed.

The conversation led us to explore the idea of who would die first. The topic scared me, I didn’t want to be left behind. I felt I would be irreconcilably alone if Mottsu were to die first, it was a shared fear. Karen Patterson re-frames our conversation in her conversation and it touched me deep down: “…the greatest thing you can do if you love somebody was hope that you would be the one that was left, and that you would be the one who could care for you lover…”

Mottsu was so alone in his depression, and I was there. I wasn’t there in an emergency worker or rescuer kind of way, I couldn’t keep him here, and even so I was there. As best I could I cared for him. I am the one who was left.