When a spouse no longer recognizes who you are

    It had all the subtlety of walking headfirst into a brick wall at midnight.
    Even though Deacon Dave Farinelli sensed there was something puzzling and even scary about his wife Peggy’s recent memory losses, he was able to push those anxieties to the side until December 2005 when what she said couldn’t be wished or explained away.
    While Peggy was doing exercises to rehab a broken shoulder, she mentioned offhandedly to Dave, her husband of 37 years and the father of their three adult children, that she wasn’t married.
    “She said that her husband had left her after they had only been married for six years,” Deacon Farinelli said. “I said, ‘I’m your husband.’ She said, ‘No, my husband left me.’”
    And then Deacon Farinelli reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet, where he kept his driver’s license.
    “Does this look like your husband?” Deacon Farinelli asked. Peggy replied: “He looks like that somewhat, but that’s not him.”
    When the familiar – the absolute – becomes a mystery, a world of certainty and security spins off its axis.
    “That’s when I knew for sure, we’ve got issues, we’ve got some problems,” Deacon Farinelli said.
    Nearly six years into the sobering diagnosis of Peggy’s Alzheimer’s disease, the Farinellis treat every day as both a challenge and a mysterious gift. Rather than keep the heartbreak private, Deacon Farinelli regularly has shared his frustrations and joys through updates to friends using social media.
    Some of his posts describe the rigors of sleep deprivation that befall the primary caregiver. The neurologists have told Deacon Farinelli that they are amazed that despite her extensive memory loss, Peggy, 71, is still walking independently and feeding herself.
    Still, the journey into the unknown has turned the Farinelli family upside down.
    “It’s very sad for the kids, and I think it’s more difficult than they let on,” Deacon Farinelli said. “It’s difficult to see their mother like this. They tell me, ‘I don’t know what to talk to her about. She can’t carry on a conversation.’
    “It’s like having a new baby in your house forever. You just don’t know what any night’s going to bring. You don’t know when she’ll get nervous or agitated.”
    Peggy was the family workhorse and prayer warrior.
    “Before, she taught school, ran the house and took care of three kids and took care of me – literally, she did everything,” Deacon Farinelli said. “Now I have to hire an army to do all the things she did. She used to paint and draw and read. And she used to pray. She prayed all the time. In fact, we had a running joke that if you needed something and needed your prayers answered, just call Peg and it would happen.”
    Another hint Deacon Farinelli had that something was wrong occurred when Peggy had hand-sewn over a series of weeks a set of vestments for Houma-Thibodaux Deacon Gerald Rivette’s 2006 ordination. When Rivette told the Farinellis before his ordination that he was looking forward to his big day, Peggy expressed surprise: “Oh, you’re getting ordained?”
    Deacon Farinelli said he regarded that as short-term memory loss. Then there was the trip to see her daughter in Florida when she took Exit 101 on I-10 in Alabama rather than Exit 101 in Florida. “We just thought it was a common mistake, just a mix-up,” Deacon Farinelli said.
    She forgot how to make coffee, something she had done for her husband every day of their married life. The memory lapses progressed from there until she no longer knew the man she loved.
    “I wasn’t prepared at all, so initially it was very frightening,” said Deacon Farinelli, who has taken a leave of absence from his liturgical duties at St. Peter Parish in Reserve to spend more time with his wife. “After that it was very sad. You just have to make adaptations every day to what it is she can’t do now.”
    Their shared journey has made them closer. “I have grown deeper in my faith and closer to her,” Deacon Farinelli said. “We have a stronger relationship now than we ever did, and it was good before.”
    The writing, the letting go of feelings, the prayers have helped get him through.
    “The times I find are the hardest are the ones that are monumental,” Deacon Farinelli said. “The 19th of July was our 43rd wedding anniversary, and she doesn’t even know we’re married. How do you deal with it? You take it like a boat in the ocean – you go over one wave at a time.”
    Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at [email protected].