Where Time Is Forgotten

If James Barrie was correct in concluding that God gave us memory so we would have roses in winter, I have been to a place where there are no roses.

It’s a home for Alzheimer patients in San Gabriel called Mission Lodge. There, in a tree-shaded setting whose beauty is all but lost on its occupants, abide victims of a disease that eats at one’s very soul.

It erodes memory first and then time itself, trapping those who suffer its worst effects in a place where there is no light and there are no doors.

I went to Mission Lodge in pursuit of an idea whose gimmickry dulled in the face of reality. I wanted to write a first-of-the-year column that had something to do with time.

I do that almost every January. Last year it was a clock repairman surrounded by a bedlam of ticking and bonging. The year before that, a woman who had lived a hundred years.

This year I decided I would write about a place where time is forgotten, applying a twist to an idea that now seems inadequate. I looked around for a facility that dealt with Alzheimer patients; a place where there is no time.

I remembered a friend named Esther whom I had watched slip gradually into the mind’s abyss, and prevailed upon her husband to take me to the home where she will spend the rest of her life. That brought me to Mission Lodge, a nursing facility founded almost a century ago.

Its hacienda setting, graceful pine trees and illustrious gardens are Esther’s coffin. There she spends her fading days, half-smile fixed on the face of a mannequin, eyes staring out at a world that no longer exists.

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Mission Lodge represents a small corner of Alzheimer’s savagery. Four million Americans suffer from the disease, more than 100,000 in L.A. County. It’s the fourth leading cause of death among older people.

When I arrived at the San Gabriel home, time was still the point of my being there, to expand an idea into a workable essay; time and memory.

“They remember only this moment,” Carol DeMarco explained as she led me down a bright corridor. “That’s the time that’s important to them. Now. This instant.”

She’s Mission Lodge’s administrator, 30 years in nursing, three years at the Lodge. There are 153 patients, both men and women.

“There are different levels to Alzheimer’s,” she said. “It begins from the moment you feel something’s wrong but can’t put your finger on it, until you lose yourself.”

That’s the way it was with Esther. First a vague notion that something was amiss, then a loss of memory and a loss of function . . . and a loss of self. Dignity died midway through the descent.

Not all of those at the lodge are comatose. They dwell in different stages of the disease. Some have regressed to their childhood and clutch stuffed toys, living in a Peter Pan world where no one ever grows old.

Christmas was a special time for them. They loved Santa. Later, there was no memory of the day, but for that moment they came alive. “It’s what we hope for,” DeMarco said. “Happiness, however brief, is important in a place where remembering a name is a triumph.”

She led me through rooms and corridors of men and women walking aimlessly, of others in wheelchairs, some with walkers . . . and still others in the last stages of their lives, dying in a dementia that’s dark and lonely.

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The disease takes strange turns. One patient, a former teacher, tried to leave the home every day at three in the afternoon. Research revealed it was once the time she left school to help children cross the street.

“They have their agendas,” DeMarco said. “We just don’t always know what they are. Those who don’t go back to their childhood retreat to a time when they were happy or when something wasn’t resolved.”

The woman who fought to leave at three each day was assured that a crossing guard had been hired and the children were safe.

I tried without success to speak to a few of the patients. Some simply stared back. One repeated every last sentence. One sang an unintelligible song in a childlike voice from somewhere in her past. One rocked a doll in endless rhythm, as though it were the baby she once held in her arms.

There are no mirrors at Mission Lodge. The patients’ own images frighten them. The face that looks back isn’t the person they remember.

“They know who they were,” DeMarco says, “but not who they are. Some have photos on their walls of who they were. They stare at them and seem to think, ‘I know that person. . . .’ ”

As I left Mission Lodge, I looked back at Esther. The half-smile remained fixed. The gaze was still straight ahead. She’ll never get better. I wish she had roses.