How Alzheimer’s Changed Everything - Dining Out With Ed

Being in love with a person who has Alzheimer’s can be like living on another planet.By Marie MarleyAlzheimer's Reading Room As many of you know I had a thirty-year relationship with Edward Theodoru, my beloved Romanian life partner, who later developed Alzheimer’s.Subscribe to the Alzheimer's Reading RoomEmail: Dining out – Before Alzheimer’sI can’t help but remember how gallant and chivalrous Ed had been when we dined out on our first date back in 1975. I remember how he kissed my hand when I opened the door of my apartment to greet him.When we reached Lenhardt’s, a wonderful Austrian-Hungarian restaurant in Cincinnati, Ohio, the hostess led us to a table covered with a starched white tablecloth and bearing a little vase of fresh daisies.What surprised me was that Ed pulled out my chair for me. Gee, no man does that anymore. “The service is usually r-r-really slow here, so we’ll have for conversation a lot of time,” Ed smiled. I got a Salem from the pack I’d placed on the table and was again pleasantly surprised when he produced a lit match just at the instant I put the cigarette to my mouth. What a gentleman!Shortly thereafter, the hostess brought us some ice water. We went there often enough to know that she was from Hungary and spoke Romanian rather fluently. I wanted to kid Ed sometime and call him a jerk in his native language, so I asked her, “How do you say ‘jerk’ in Romanian?”She answered instantly, dramatically flinging her right arm hi...
Source: Alzheimer's Reading Room, The - Category: Dementia Tags: Alzheimers Dementia alzheimers dining out Alzheimers Disease alzheimers story alzheimers symptoms brain games health life news memory loss Source Type: blogs