Law sometimes leaves little room for compassion

Jimmy Wheeler, 84, is out on bail. The charge? Attempting to kill his wife.

I stopped by his daughter's house in Carpinteria and he greeted me at the front door, ready to talk about what he intended as an act of mercy.

Wheeler shook my hand and led me to the dining room table. A pleasant smile was fixed on his tanned, lined face, but he was dabbing at his eyes.

And then he lost it on the first question.

I asked how he met his wife, Betty, whom he calls Beckie. He sobbed, his chest heaved and then he began his story. They were students at UCLA, he said, his memories still fresh. He never saw her on campus, though. The first time he laid eyes on her was at the beach in Santa Monica.

She was with friends, but they were invisible to Jimmy.

"She was cute, she was smart, she was happy," he said. "And she had a nice shape."

Wheeler drove a Model A station wagon painted UCLA blue and gold, and Beckie agreed to ride back to campus with this lanky young poli-sci major. He looked a little like Jimmy Stewart, with piercing blue eyes.

They were married two years later, at the height of World War II. Soon he was off to fly bombing missions over Europe. After the war, he finished school at Oregon State and got a graduate degree from Stanford. Jimmy then found work as a petroleum engineer, and he and Beckie raised a son and daughter in Carpinteria.

This is a love story, of course. The attempted murder notwithstanding.

It's a story many of us find familiar in one way or another, particularly we boomers with ailing parents. I couldn't stop thinking about -- and talking about -- my own parents as Mr. Wheeler and I chatted.

A hundred times in the last year, my siblings and I have wondered whether we're intruding too much, or not enough, into our parents' lives. Is it time to insist on home care? Should we insist it's time to surrender driver's licenses?

We're much better at the questions than the answers.

Wheeler and his wife have been married 64 years, and they've enjoyed what he called "a wonderful life." But Beckie, 85, has Alzheimer's.

Jimmy Wheeler took good care of his wife, stealing all that he could from what was left of normal. They kept traveling, one of their great joys, until her illness made that impossible. Until quite recently, he and Beckie could be seen walking down the street to the beach, holding hands like young lovers.

But Beckie was fading into solitude, the world around her a growing mystery, and then finally Jimmy was a stranger to her.

"She wakes up in the morning and doesn't know who the guy in bed with her is," Wheeler told me with wet eyes, capturing perfectly the horror of watching a loved one disappear into a fog.

In a way it's crueler than death itself, because there's no moving on for the survivor. There is only this ghost, a constant reflection of love and loss.

"Are you OK?" Jimmy's son-in-law, Stan Scrivner, asked him one morning when he came to the door in obvious distress.

"No," Wheeler said. "Beckie's gone."