David and I were spending our usual Sunday morning together--which starts at the iHop Pancake House and moves on to mass at St. Ignatius--when he began to look around at all the people in the restaurant. His eyes began to glisten as he canvassed the various scenes of people. I asked him what he was thinking about. He looked at me with a look on his face that was deeply contemplative, with tears welling in his eyes. He pointed to the crowd of people in the restaurant, bottom lip quivering, and said:
"It's so nice to be alive...and to like people."
One thing that has been incredibly difficult to accept of David's condition is the way his speech has been so severely limited, and his thoughts truncated. Words rarely come, and when they do, they are often one-word replies. David spent the bulk of his life inspiring others by the words he spoke, and I was fortunate to be the recipient of his words and feelings because of our long life together. In those few words, there was an undeniable echo of many conversations we have had in the past, and I can sometimes piece together what he means when the words he speaks are so few. The look on his face when he made this statement was genuine with a raw emotion that spoke volumes.
David woke each morning with a fresh awareness of the gift that another day brings. He enjoyed solitude in the mornings, and had a routine of reading the daily Mass Missal and reflecting on the teachings. His work with people with AIDS for over ten years gave him a deeper appreciation for life than most have, and impressed on him the gift that being alive brings. Life is a temporary condition, and the importance of appreciating it every day was not lost on him.
Given his vocation, people were also the centerpiece of his daily activities. They came to him with their joys and sorrows, and his gentle presence was a comfort to thousands of people over his 40+ year career. His relationships were paramount to his experience of life, and the older and more experienced he became, the more profoundly he believed that people should not be alone in life, that having others in our lives adds a rich dimension that is unsurpassed by anything else life can offer.
When David says "It's so nice to be alive...and to like people," the meaning is clear to me; even though he has lost so much--and I truly believe he knows this at some level--he can still appreciate the beauty of being alive. When we walk around the block, he looks around at the trees and the buildings and the people like he was seeing them for the first time. The care he receives from the good people at Gaffney House remind him that people are not only basically good, but indeed necessary.
After he was initially diagnosed with Alzheimer's, he began to tell me and others that
"I have a start of Alzheimer's in my life.
It's part of getting older. But I believe we can be alive in new ways."
What David is saying, I believe, is that even with such a catastrophic loss, his joy for life remains, and his love for others persists. Even when he is unable to express it with words we can understand.
