RE:

Dear Pat Robertson,
The word was crushing. Or at least, I would imagine it to have been. I don't remember. I was too young. In fact, I don't remember very much about my grandfather at all. I remember tractor rides...and donkey songs...and falling asleep in chairs...but other than that, much of my memories with him were stolen by the word.
Alzheimer's.
The word conjures up images I'd rather forget. Every year things grew worse. Finally it was inevitable. My grandma just wasn't enough...he needed more care. We visited the nursing home as much as we could. I hated it. The person he was ceased to be. He didn't know me...and I no longer knew the person into which he was daily deteriorating.
I remember it bothered me. I would watch my grandma go every time hopeful...that maybe THIS day there would be a moment of clarity...a spark of recognition. And when we went with her, she treated him as if nothing was wrong. She told him about her day, about the garden, and the neighbors. And she fed him. Everyday. Month after month. Year after year.
It took me a long time to grasp what I saw...and to process the significance of it. It took an unsaved nurse to make me see the beauty of it all. She worked in my grandpa's nursing home and had observed my grandma with my grandpa. She watched her faithfully care for him...and at his funeral she said, "You taught me what it meant to love my husband. You showed me the definition of true love."
And that is the heritage I have been given. That love doesn't quit when it hurts, gets ugly, forgets, or ceases to be what it once was. That love always believes and hopes...even when it is beyond hope of a cure and has no doctors left to believe in. That love doesn't cease giving because it no longer receives. That love is not diminished by a diagnosis. And that love doesn't end when "happily ever after" does. It endures.
Alzheimer's may have robbed me of more tractor rides and stories...but what it gave me is far greater. It gave me a great respect for marriage...and it will be with a solemn and sincere heart that I say, "in sickness and health..." because I know what love through sickness looks like. I know what love through death looks like. And it endures.
I only wish you knew the beauty of a love like this...a love that had the courage to walk through the valley of the shadow of death
unscathed....a love that stood firmly behind every word that was promised in wedding vows long ago, never seeking a technicality for an escape.
Because this, Pat, this is what marriage is all about.