When her husband, Ady, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Helene Berger vowed to seek joy in the face of the disease. During the last 2 years of his life, he achieved what is considered impossible: played Mozart on the piano, solved Sudoku puzzles and wrote love letters.
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00:00When the doctor made that pronouncement of those three words, my husband looked at him
00:13and said, I don't want to live anymore.
00:40We may not be able to change the disease, but how we handle it can change your loved
00:52one's life and your life together.
01:03It was not medication, but it was the two of us working together, instead of being
01:10a time of drudgery and horror, it was truly, not only content, it was more than content.
01:18I saw the difference in this man.
01:21I knew I had a hand in helping him get there, and it was, we had precious times together.
01:28We made everything we did as sweet as possible.
01:39Almost every decision was made as a partnership.
01:43I came to him with a problem, and we solved it together, and instead of fighting each
01:47other and being angry at each other, we were a team, looking ahead in the same direction.
01:58The bottom line is that what he was able to do in the final few years, he went back to
02:07the piano.
02:08He hadn't played in three years.
02:11He never knew Sudoku.
02:13In the first two years, this mathematician, I thought he'd love it.
02:17He couldn't understand where all those little numbers went in little boxes.
02:20The last two, three years, he played Sudoku every night.
02:36We're human, and an Alzheimer's patient will ask the same question many, many times.
02:43In the beginning, even though I said the word sweetly, if he said, where are you going tonight?
02:49I would say, sweetie, I'm going to the ballet with Elaine.
02:52Oh, yeah, okay.
02:55And the second time, third, by the fourth or fifth time, what you do, everyone does,
03:02I did, is instinctively take that in, take a breath, or raise their eyebrow, or say the
03:14same words in, dear, I'm going to the ballet with Elaine, implying, I told you that a thousand
03:22times already.
03:23And one night, as I said it, I saw I was very sensitive to his mood, and he was very sensitive
03:32to mine.
03:33And I saw it was like a punch in the gut, and I vowed to myself, I'm not doing that
03:39again.
03:44On the night that he unexpectedly passed away, we took 17 people out for dinner, and miraculously,
04:07he greeted every one of those 17 people by name.
04:11Two of the couples, good friends, said the same words, are you sure he has Alzheimer's?
04:20And yes, he did, but in the course of those six years, and it wasn't me alone, I made
04:27plenty of mistakes in the beginning, but in the course of those six years, he kept getting
04:34better and better and better.