The mind is failing, but the heart still stirs

ON the day the doctor placed my father in a facility, the director of Family Services handed me a book to read -- a party favor, as it were, for having completed the hours of paperwork that was required of me. It was titled “Talking to Alzheimer’s,” a sort of self-help guide to entering the bizarre and uncharted territory of conversation with a loved one whose brain no longer recognizes itself.

Family and friends of the patient are taught that the most effective method of verbal communication is basically not to initiate discussion. Instead, let the patient sail away, then follow along in the wake of disjointed words.

As I traveled further into the author’s words of wisdom, I came upon the chapter about romance. It’s true: My father, even at 89 and slipping quickly and irrevocably into the cloud of dementia, asked me to help him fill out a doctor’s form. When we came to the page on sexual dysfunction, I assumed he wanted to skip it. Instead, to my horror, he announced, “This is a problem!” OK. Guess some things are indeed ageless.

It seems that romantic desire doesn’t disappear just because the conscious effort to possess it does. It was touching to read that residents of this world, new and foreign to us on the outside, turn to affection on the inside -- behind the closed doors of a lockdown facility -- for reassurance

The book prepares family members for the possibility that they might observe a husband, wife, mother or father holding hands with someone or with their arms around that person. A kiss is still a kiss.

The Family Services director was pleased to inform me that my father has found comfort in and is protective of Beatrice, a petite female resident. His brain may be dying, but chivalry is not: He escorts her to the dining room each evening although she often seems confused and does not know exactly who he is.

There is Cynthia, a more formidable woman from whom he darts when she enters the community room. “She’s always after me,” he told me, pointing her out when I visited last week. He skirted me away quickly as she waved wildly from her chair. Obviously, the unrequited love she feels doesn’t stop her from trying, day after day. No inhibitions here. How refreshing!

And think about it: They don’t have to worry about who pays the dinner check, appropriate dating attire, or whether anyone will wake up with regrets.

Every day is a new experience; each date is the first date -- that exhilarating, heart-pounding thrill that only happens once -- over and over again.

They can actually achieve in their relationships what we spend thousands of dollars in therapy and hours of self-help reading to try to master: the ability to forget yesterday, stop fretting about tomorrow, and live only for this moment. It’s no wonder love is the only thing that still works when the mind ceases to.

Love is wasted on the young; there is no doubt. But since my father has entered that faraway land that I thought would be nothing but painful for him, as he moves farther and farther away from me and closer to a place I cannot understand, I am beginning to see possibility -- call it just a small glimmer of hope.

Perhaps we come into this world looking for love in all the wrong places. If we are exceeding lucky, we find it in the right places; but if we are blessed, we rediscover it -- much later -- in a place we only dream about, and in a way that defies rationality.

After all, who says being in love was ever rational?

weekend@latimes.com