Rae Ann, David's Bear

During her career at Chase Bank, Rae Ann didn't handle any account worth less than a million dollars.

One evening, she called her husband, David, from her office to say that the FBI had just shown up, needing her to run numbers on an account whose owner the federal government wanted to prosecute.  So who knew when she'd get home.

That's the type of job she had.

When I met Rae Ann, however, her proficiency with numbers extended to babbling "one-one-one-one-one" or "one-two-one-two-one-two."  You see, I met Rae Ann at Autumn Leaves, the dementia care facility where we'd had to place my father.

Just before David placed Rae Ann at Autumn Leaves, he'd had her brain tested, and it was functioning at the level of a two-year-old's.

David and Rae Ann lived simply, and they never had children.  Theirs was the second marriage for both of them, and while each of them had good jobs that required considerable responsibility, they were never big wage earners.  Still, they'd managed to amass a small fortune that should have ensured that they'd enjoy a comfortable and secure retirement.  But Rae Ann developed early-onset dementia, forcing her to retire early from Chase Bank.  And when she died early this morning, at Autumn Leaves, the sizable retirement portfolio she and David had built had been depleted to several thousand dollars.

All the rest - including vacation property in Maine that David sold a couple of years ago - ended up paying for her dementia care.

David died over a year ago, after his COPD flared up.  He'd quit smoking years before, but after he was forced to place Rae Ann in Autumn Leaves, his mother suffered a debilitating stroke and soon died.  As his wife's condition continued to deteriorate, the stress wreaked havoc on David, and he went back to smoking, even though he kept denying it to anybody who'd ask.  His own death was quick and relatively painful; quite unlike his wife's death, which was slow and, in her final days, quiet and as pain-free as her hospice nurses could make it.

On his deathbed - literally - my mother and I promised David that we'd continue to look after his dear wife, the woman he affectionately called his "Bear."  Her extended family lives in Maine and Florida, and David's only surviving relative, his brother, was struggling with his own cancer treatments at the time.  Fortunately, David's brother eventually managed to beat his cancer, and along with his wife, they moved to Arlington from Mississippi so they could be closer to better cancer care if he needed it in the future.  Along with one of Rae Ann's brothers in Maine who served as her medical power of attorney, David's brother and sister-in-law monitored Rae Ann's daily care until the end.  And Mom and I visited her at least once a week, like we promised her husband we would.

Although... it was quite weird for us to realize that, because of her dementia, she never knew she had become a widow.

When Mom and I first toured Autumn Leaves, as we prepared to place Dad there, Mom says she was in such a daze, she doesn't remember it.  But we met Rae Ann during that tour, as one of the managers was showing us the facility's airy craft room, and explaining how all of the artwork on the walls had been done by former residents.  Rae Ann, who at the time still sported what I'd call a "normal" hairstyle, wore clean clothes, and properly-applied fingernail polish, wandered into the craft room, silently listening to the manager, and nodding her head in an inquisitive cadence.  At first, I thought she was the family member of another resident there.  She wore a bright shirt with "Maine" on it, something I particularly noticed since my Mom is originally from there.

It wasn't until the manager took Mom and me from the craft room and down another hallway - with Rae Ann still shuffling along behind us! - that I realized she was a resident.

Back then, David usually fed her at mealtimes, so her clothes weren't marked by spilled food.  If you've ever seen a dementia patient eat, you know it can be a messy process.  Rae Ann didn't really need to be fed until about a year ago, but David wanted to spend as much time with her as possible, and he wasn't bothered by the chaos that can easily overtake a dining room full of dementia patients.  Mom and I, on the other hand, couldn't bear to watch Dad eat, so I'd usually place him at David and Rae Ann's table before we left.

She'd led a proper and well-mannered life before dementia set in, as you'd expect from an accountant at a bank.  Rae Ann quilted, crocheted, and sewed in her spare time - all hobbies that bespeak a congenial temperament of precision and disciplined creativity.  In fact, when her brother-in-law and sister-in-law cleaned out their house after David died, they contacted a church group known for its knitting circle to come and clear out a bedroom full of cloth, yarn, and other supplies.  When the ladies arrived to get the material, they were stunned, and told her in-laws that they would document all that Rae Ann had in stock for tax purposes, because it would be a significant amount.  To her in-laws' surprise, the ladies calculated that Rae Ann amassed craft materials worth over $11,000!  She'd probably planned on spending her retirement working away quietly on various knitting and sewing projects.  Instead, it went to helping pay down David's estate taxes.

At Autumn Leaves, meanwhile, Rae Ann could be anything but quiet and well-mannered.  One morning, just as we'd arrived to visit Dad, Mom and I saw Rae Ann storm by, her face as black as coal with that tell-tale dementia scowl, water dripping everywhere, clothed only in a canvas-looking shift that caregivers often put on residents while being bathed or showered.  Her hair was dripping wet, and a caregiver was trotting behind her, towel in hand, but staying just enough out of Raye Ann's strident gait.  According to Texas state law, residents of care centers cannot leave a shower with wet hair, so the caregiver who'd lost the battle in the shower was simply following Rae Ann with the towel in case a state inspector showed up!  David had already approved that plan after it was discovered that Rae Ann, whose normal lifetime of patience ran low in her dementia, would often rage out of a half-completed shower, maybe because she didn't understand why she was wet.  "Just stay out of her way when she's in that mood," David would say.  "It's one reason I have her here - I can't control it myself."

He arrived at Autumn Leaves soon after that, and when Mom and I told him - laughing - the spectacle we'd seen, David laughed as well.  "That's my 'Bear'," he grinned.

One time, after she had a seizure and David took her to the hospital, Rae Ann managed to deck an ER technician, despite her petite frame and skinny arms.  Indeed, Mom and I never touched her until recently, when her strength was obviously gone.  We didn't  know what would provoke her.  Sometimes she'd lash out at David, and he just took it, because he knew she didn't know what she was doing.  One time, a visitor to Autumn Leaves came up to her, on the other side of a room from where David and I were talking, and he put his arm around her to greet her.  Some people are touchy-feely like that, even when they don't know the other person.  But Rae Ann wasn't a touchy-feely type of person.  She turned and glared at the man, a complete stranger, and her face turned coal-black.  David turned to me quietly and said, "I'm waiting for her to lay him flat out cold."

Fortunately for the man, he immediately got Rae Ann's drift, and moved away from her, much to David's obvious disappointment!

Back in those days - hard to believe I'm only talking about the time three years ago when Dad was there - the corporate office at Autumn Leaves would hold corporate parties at this Arlington facility, which is the original in their chain of dementia care homes.  They'd hire a caterer, set up long tables with white tablecloths stocked with platters of fancy foods, and invite vendors, family members, and who knows who else to come and have a feast.  Mom and I never understood why people would want to party and socialize at a dementia facility, and the parties never did manage to attract big crowds.  But one evening, as Mom and I were getting ready to leave, and I was about to take Dad down to his dining room (away from the tables with white tablecloths), David came strolling by, looking for Rae Ann.

"Have you eaten any of this grub?" David asked, with a chuckle in his voice.  When we told him we hadn't, he laughed.  "Good!  Because Bear's been by a couple of times already, dipping her hands into each of those bowls, and fingering all of those platters of food!"

And who knows where else those hands had been.  Dementia patients are not known for their cleanliness or sanitation savvy.

One of the things Rae Ann did - for hours on end - was walk.  Autumn Leaves is designed with hallways that radiate out from a central courtyard, which gives dementia patients the feeling that as they walk, they're actually going someplace, even though they're just walking in one big circle.  Dad walked a lot, too, but not as much as Rae Ann.  One Saturday, I recall, Mom and I were at the doorway to Dad's room when I looked up the hall, and saw Miss Margie, one of the most frail women there, being helped along by her son.  But they were in Rae Ann's way, during one of her walks, and she pushed Miss Margie so that she fell, and actually broke her hip - right there, as Miss Margie's son and I watched.  They had to call an ambulance and take Miss Margie to the hospital, and although physical therapy managed to help get her back on her feet, Miss Margie never really did walk again, and her family preferred her having the relative safety of a wheelchair anyway.  But the family never sued David or Rae Ann, or Autumn Leaves.  Like all of us who have to deal with the reality of dementia, Miss Margie's family understood that "sometimes things just happen."  It's sad, and frustrating, and even a bit scary, but that's dementia.

What's also scary about dementia is how young some of its victims are.

Rae Ann, for example, was 71.  She'd had dementia for approximately nine years.  David dutifully cared for her by himself until he could no longer handle her severe mood swings.  He realized things were getting out hand when, one day, she opened the door and invited some Jehovah's Witnesses inside before he, from another part of the house, realized what was going on.  Fortunately for the irreligious David, their conversation was going nowhere fast!  Remember the "one-one-one-one" babbling?  That's about all the talking Rae Ann could do.

Well, except for one time that Mom and I will remember with special fondness.  We were with Dad, and David, and Rae Ann, walking the hallways together, and we came upon one of the activity directors, a young, small woman who was expecting her first child.  And David took it upon himself to make a mild "fat" joke in light of her pregnancy...  at which point Rae Ann stopped, wheeled around, and turning to David, pointed a skinny finger into his face, and loudly chastised, "NO.  Not my husband!"

It was an amazing moment of clarity for Rae Ann, and we all burst into laughter.  Except David, whose eyes welled up with tears.  Yet not with shame, at being reprimanded.

"Imagine her picking this time to be lucid," he marveled, beaming lovingly at his wife.