He knows too well a disease’s darkness

There will come a point in the life of Buddy Epstein when the world around him will dissolve, taking with it his history and his identity. Barring a miracle, all that will remain will be the shell of a man existing in a void without meaning and without recognition. Buddy Epstein, in short, will disappear, the victim of a living death called Alzheimer’s disease.

He discusses it in the clear and solemn manner of a lawyer defining the elements of a case that affects him only as a counselor. If he agonizes over the symptoms, he doesn’t reveal it to me. Rather, he fights to keep focused on the subject, realistically acknowledging that he has the disease, that it is affecting him and that it will consume him, but refusing to go gently into that night of the soul.

The estimated 5 million Americans who have Alzheimer’s live in a world of moments, their lives reduced to the here and now, struggling to identify what they see but cannot define.

Epstein is 58 and divorced and has practiced law for 32 years. He sat quietly across from me in a restaurant at the beach, a man of modest height and somber expression. His hair is short and shows strands of gray. He cultivates the stubble of a beard. His manner is intense, almost furtive, and he chews gum angrily.

“I have clear days and I have unclear days,” he says, explaining his condition. “I am not as competent as I used to be.”

Three years ago Epstein was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. He knew it might come. His mother, father and grandmother all had it in their latter years. He left the law firm that employed him, reluctantly giving up the work he loved, and is now facing days, he says, of abject boredom. His life is incomplete.

Slowly, his ability to handle the “deal making” involved in many of his cases lessened. His attention span diminished. “One day you’re there,” he says, “and one day you’re not.” An ability to memorize that once had rarely failed him began to slip away.

“I was the kind of guy who could remember every phone number. I could do four things at once. Then it stopped. I knew something was clearly wrong.”

Others noticed too. The firm’s managing partner, whose wife has also been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, suggested he be tested. A brain scan revealed the worst.

I met with Epstein on a day made for living, not dying. Sunlight streamed through a window and illuminated his face in such a way that it almost resembled a painting. Outside the luncheon room of Shutters Hotel in Santa Monica, families walked along the beach. Waves etched patterns in the sand.

Epstein agreed to talk about his case for the benefit of Sunday’s Alzheimer’s Walk through downtown L.A., a fundraising effort to back research into the melancholy disease. I agreed to listen because three years ago, my sister Dolores vanished into the darkness that is Alzheimer’s, gradually becoming a part of the gloom that embraced her. She was two years younger than I. Her last words were that she wanted to go home, that place in the dwindling light of her heart that represented a prior existence she couldn’t remember.

It is for her, in a way, that I write this column. She was my little sister, the one I watched out for, protected against bullies and helped with schoolwork. In the days before she died, all I could offer was the comfort of my presence.

Epstein was able to articulate his thoughts, although hesitantly and often with a stammer, as though a connection between ideas and words had been impaired, and that’s essentially what the disease is, a failure of neurons in the brain to make synaptic connections. There is no cure and very little relief. Even the cause is in question.

Asked if he’s afraid of the days ahead, he ponders the question silently for a moment and says, “I don’t think about it. I saw what happened to my mother, father and grandmother. You get more forgetful as time goes on and eventually end up in a haze.”

Then: “I don’t know what happens after that. My future is dwindling away.”

He knows someone will have to care for him when he can no longer care for himself. Medications have slowed the effect of the disease but its thrust is tenacious. He is aware of the research being conducted and is trying to keep himself in good physical shape to be able to benefit from any breakthroughs.

As our conversation ended, I could almost visualize the man disappearing before me. The basic elements that compose him will vanish in the sunlight that illuminates the beach, the man and all that he is. There will no longer be a Buddy Epstein, only a silhouette of the person that used to be.

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