Jon Henes, Writer, "Alzheimer's Disease: A Letter to My Mom"
[0:00]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and this is Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:15]As a mom of four kids in New York City and a writer myself, I know all too well how short
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[0:59]I'm super excited to be here today with John Hennis.
[1:03]John is a partner in the restructuring group at La From Kirkland, and Alice, where he has
[1:07]led some of the largest deals in the world.
[1:09]He has written extensively online for CNBC, Bloomberg, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, The
[1:14]Deal, Forbes, and Medium.
[1:15]He frequently appears on CNBC as a guest expert.
[1:18]John serves on the board of caring kind, the heart of Alzheimer's caregiving.
[1:22]Common sense media, the foundation for education on Honduras and many other nonprofits.
[1:27]John is lectured at Harvard Business School, NYU, Warren Business School, Wake Forest
[1:31]Law School, and Cardozo Law School where he is an adjunct professor.
[1:34]He lives in Manhattan with his wife and five children.
[1:37]The series of essays about coping with his mother's Alzheimer's disease are absolutely
[1:40]brilliant.
[1:41]So welcome to John.
[1:42]Thank you very much.
[1:43]And you're welcome.
[1:44]So John, you are an amazingly prolific writer.
[1:48]Your writing style is crisp, clear, and relatable.
[1:50]You even made me understand the top five reasons why the debt ceiling might not be
[1:54]raised, or at least I now have a grasp on the issue from 2011 in a whole new way.
[1:59]How did you learn to write so well, and when did you start writing for publications?
[2:03]Well, I don't know if I write so well, but I started writing for publications back when
[2:08]the financial world exploded.
[2:11]Kind of John Wall, who used to run CNBC at that time with somebody I knew.
[2:15]And he reached out to me and said, we have nobody here who truly understands bankruptcy.
[2:21]Can you write something?
[2:23]I'm trying not to write it like a lawyer and send it to me, and let me see, and if I like
[2:27]it, I'll post it.
[2:29]So I wrote it, and he said, oh, this doesn't look like how a lawyer would write something.
[2:33]And it just kind of led from there.
[2:35]So I never had to submit things.
[2:37]I would just hand them over to CNBC, and they would post them.
[2:42]And I found that I liked to write, and I can write very quickly.
[2:45]So I would have a few minutes in the day and would have some idea and would write it,
[2:50]and that's how it started with CNBC and Bloomberg in those types of organizations.
[2:55]And so you never even had to pitch, people would just come after you.
[2:58]Yeah, I don't even know if they were chasing me.
[3:00]It became very easy to just go onto their blogs and put things on there.
[3:04]That's great.
[3:05]Yeah, it was fun.
[3:08]Awesome.
[3:09]So while you're this amazing writer about all sorts of legal and business issues and
[3:13]really help to still the essence of something very simple for everyone to understand, I really
[3:19]wanted to do on this show to talk about your series of essays on media about your beautiful
[3:23]mother Karen, now age 71, who is living with Alzheimer's.
[3:28]In your piece from March, 2016, called My Mom's Vacant Eyes Living with Alzheimer's
[3:33]Disease, I'm going to quote, that's okay, he wrote, yesterday on my birthday, I visited
[3:38]my mom.
[3:39]For the past 10 years, my mom has been living with Alzheimer's disease.
[3:43]She is not alone.
[3:44]More than 5 million Americans live with the insidious carnivorous disease, which attacks
[3:49]their brains and steals their memories.
[3:51]The disease is not merciful.
[3:52]It does not impose a quick death sentence.
[3:55]Instead, it's statistically devastates its victims from strong, thoughtful, compassionate
[4:00]people to empty, distorted images of their former selves.
[4:04]It's horrifying and heartbreaking to watch.
[4:06]It's not like watching a car crash in slow motion.
[4:09]It's actually watching the person you love disappear slowly.
[4:12]One memory at a time before your very eyes, I'm like literally, I'm so cranking.
[4:17]This is heartbreaking and so beautifully written.
[4:21]How did you switch gears from professional writing and start writing about your mom?
[4:26]I think Alzheimer's is an amazingly difficult disease to grasp and everybody deals with it
[4:32]differently and for a very long time, I just didn't deal with it.
[4:37]One day, actually, my son was asking me some questions.
[4:41]This is when he was obviously younger and I wrote a letter to my mom and I decided
[4:48]I was going to take my son with me because he wanted to see her and read it to her.
[4:52]Then, after I read it, I showed it to a couple of people and people said, you know, you
[4:57]should try to publish this so that I ran around knowing nothing about publishing and asking
[5:02]people some reporters that I knew and things.
[5:05]Where should I put this?
[5:06]Where should I publish it?
[5:08]Somebody mentioned medium to me, so I just did it on medium and I sent it around.
[5:14]Facebook, I can't remember 100% how I got it out there and then it just kind of picked
[5:20]up, I don't know, five or six thousand people read it and I spent more importantly, I started
[5:24]getting calls and emails from people, friends and others who said, hey, I'm kind of going
[5:31]through the same thing.
[5:32]I don't really know how to deal with it, you know, reading this helped a little bit,
[5:37]you know, to see somebody else going through it as well.
[5:40]Everybody had their, everybody had a similar story, but their own unique story.
[5:45]But on writing it, it just, for me, it just kind of helped me cope because I was not reaching
[5:51]out to other people and talking about it, that wasn't letting people know about it.
[5:56]And then when I wrote this and I got the response in terms of, hey, this is helping me,
[6:02]then I thought, you know, maybe I'll write a little bit more.
[6:04]That's great.
[6:06]Whether there's some things that you've found that you've been struggling with and not
[6:10]talking about that other people specifically had been struggling with.
[6:14]Yeah.
[6:15]You know, the thing about Alzheimer's disease is that it doesn't happen all at once.
[6:21]It's not like you wake up one morning and you find out that your loved one doesn't remember
[6:26]anything.
[6:27]It's very slow and every family deals with it and every person deals with it differently.
[6:34]So in my family, my father started to see differences in my mom.
[6:40]And her, she was a financial planner, her partner saw differences in my mom.
[6:45]And then they raised them with her and she kind of got defensive and, no, that's not
[6:49]true.
[6:50]I'm not forgetting things.
[6:51]My mother went back to school to get her MBA and then became a financial planner.
[6:58]And my mother is a type of person who connected with everybody.
[7:01]She always looked for a connection.
[7:03]People loved being around her because she was incredibly caring and just looked for the
[7:10]good in people and when she was a financial planner, her clients loved her because she
[7:14]was trustworthy and honorable and good at what she did.
[7:20]And then she would just forget and she wouldn't call people back, which she always
[7:23]called people back.
[7:24]And so people would say, you know, we're not hearing from Karen, like why is Karen not
[7:28]getting back to us or, you know, this, this financial report that we were supposed to get
[7:34]because we needed it for our taxes.
[7:35]She didn't get it to us.
[7:37]So as things like that and they would ask her about it and since her memory was going,
[7:41]she would say, that's not true.
[7:42]Of course, I'm calling people back.
[7:44]I always call people back.
[7:45]So as little things at first.
[7:48]And then my dad is the type of person he's a veterinarian.
[7:51]He's, you know, so he's like, his medical scientist hat on.
[7:54]He's like, there's something wrong.
[7:55]We need to find out what's wrong.
[7:57]And so he ran around, you know, injured, going to different experts and hospitals to try
[8:04]to find out what was going on, but in the meantime for me and for my wife, we were hearing
[8:09]little bits and pieces of this.
[8:12]And none of them made sense because it was my mom.
[8:13]Of course, there's nothing wrong with my mom that are the genes in our family are amazing.
[8:18]Her, her grandmother lived to be 105 or great at lived to be 107.
[8:23]She was his healthiest.
[8:25]My grandfather, her father, late in his life, developed it, but it was very, it was,
[8:31]you know, in his 80s and it was very quick.
[8:33]He got Alzheimer's and died within, you know, a few months, but he was in his 80s.
[8:41]So there was no early, you know, 60 years old having Alzheimer's.
[8:45]So for our family, my dad's running around trying to figure out what's going on.
[8:52]I'm sitting there saying, wait, you know, this has got to be stress related because, you
[8:56]know, my dad had sold his veterinary practice.
[8:58]So that was like a whole new thing for them.
[9:00]My mother's father had died.
[9:02]Her mother was sick.
[9:03]Um, you know, she was kind of the breadwinner now for the family.
[9:08]So I said, okay, this is just all stress related.
[9:10]Right.
[9:11]She's fine.
[9:12]She doesn't have Alzheimer's disease.
[9:13]It's crazy.
[9:14]And the rest of the family, her brothers didn't believe it either.
[9:17]So it became actually a thing for the rest of the better work where people were like,
[9:23]to my dad, you're crazy, right?
[9:26]She's fine.
[9:27]My mother being like, I don't have this.
[9:28]I'm fine.
[9:29]Me not wanting her to have it.
[9:31]So not wanting to believe it.
[9:33]And as all of this is going on and it, you know, this is all happening over a couple of
[9:37]years.
[9:38]Um, you know, it does kind of push his family members' part.
[9:42]And my father and my mother's youngest brother don't talk at all anymore.
[9:47]Really?
[9:48]And they were very close for, you know, 50, however many years.
[9:51]It wasn't any sort of indication when you turned out to be right.
[9:54]No.
[9:55]I don't think that's still the thing that I want to believe that it's all true.
[9:59]And so...
[10:00]He just, oh my gosh.
[10:01]People run away.
[10:02]It's a very scary thing I know as we were preparing for this.
[10:07]You know, people start thinking, well,
[10:09]wait a second, what if that is the me?
[10:10]Right.
[10:11]So it gets very scary.
[10:12]So people want to run away from that sometimes, right?
[10:15]Some people run towards it.
[10:16]Some people run away from it.
[10:17]But what I found when I wrote that letter to my mom
[10:20]and published it, one friend came to me and said,
[10:25]I want to talk to you very, very confident actually.
[10:27]So I'll do that confident so now.
[10:29]And said, you know, my father has Alzheimer's disease.
[10:32]My mother will not allow anybody to know.
[10:34]So she hides him now for everybody.
[10:36]But he was a very prominent person, got fired from his job,
[10:41]all because of the Alzheimer's disease related things.
[10:44]But nobody knew he had it.
[10:45]So people thought, oh, he's just falling down on the job.
[10:47]Maybe he has some other problem.
[10:49]You know, who knows substance abuse, what could it be?
[10:52]But he said to me, I'm struggling because I want to go get help.
[10:57]My mother doesn't, you know, she's embarrassed by it.
[11:00]So I don't know what to do.
[11:02]And that I think a lot of families go through.
[11:05]That's so interesting.
[11:06]I never would have thought that.
[11:07]Yeah, it's a crazy, crazy thing.
[11:09]Mostly, I mean, I'm like this.
[11:10]I've never, when I wrote the letter to my mom,
[11:14]people were like, we had no idea that your mom
[11:16]even was going through this.
[11:18]Everything in your family.
[11:19]I just knew me, right?
[11:20]Because I never talked about it.
[11:22]I still don't really talk about it.
[11:23]I mean, this is as much talking about it as I've done all that.
[11:27]What was it like then?
[11:28]I mean, I've seen still Alice, the movie,
[11:30]about Alzheimer's, which I like never studied that.
[11:33]But to see your mom sort of, like, let me go back to there
[11:37]was a quote you wrote in one of your pieces
[11:39]when she didn't recognize you all done.
[11:42]Let me find it was from Thanksgiving.
[11:46]Well, no, of course, we can't find it.
[11:48]But you were, it was from Thanksgiving.
[11:50]And you were saying, how can I be thankful when, you know,
[11:55]oh, how can I be thankful when I said to my mom,
[11:57]I am John, your son, and she smiled at me and responded,
[12:00]I think maybe I do know you, but I don't know how.
[12:02]Like, what is that like?
[12:04]It's like so devastating to you to sleep it, right?
[12:07]Yeah.
[12:07]Do you want to just cry?
[12:08]I mean, I would feel like I would just like burst into tears.
[12:10]Like, yeah, it's devastating.
[12:12]You said there, I say, for this, my mother.
[12:14]Right.
[12:15]But that's when I think the struggle,
[12:17]and I think I've come in that full circle 180.
[12:20]I don't know what the exact theory is.
[12:23]You know, my initial reaction was, I just, I can't do this.
[12:26]Right, yeah.
[12:27]She's already gone.
[12:28]She's not there anymore.
[12:29]So why am I dealing with this?
[12:33]I'm kind of now at the point where I've said, OK,
[12:36]I need to go see her.
[12:37]Maybe it's for me, maybe it's for her.
[12:38]I don't know who it's for.
[12:40]But I need to go and at least spend some time with her.
[12:43]And you stopped seeing her for a while, right?
[12:45]Yeah, I haven't seen her probably for, I don't know how long,
[12:48]six months maybe, now, you know.
[12:49]And it hasn't been a conscious thing.
[12:53]It hasn't been.
[12:53]I'm not going.
[12:54]It's been much more.
[12:55]I'm just incredibly busy.
[12:56]I've got five kids running around.
[12:58]I've got work.
[12:59]So, you know, how do I, when do I have time to jump in the car
[13:02]and drive to Westchester to see my mom, right?
[13:05]Yeah.
[13:05]I just don't have time.
[13:06]I can always make that excuse.
[13:08]And it's not a, you know, conscious.
[13:10]I'm making that excuse.
[13:11]I don't want to go.
[13:12]It's just by at the same time, anybody else in the world
[13:15]could look at that and say, wait, I mean,
[13:17]you can't jump in a car and drive 45 minutes to go to your mom.
[13:19]Of course you could.
[13:22]But it's a hard fit.
[13:23]And now, I mean, she's passed that.
[13:25]I mean, she can't really speak at all.
[13:28]So there's no, it's not going to be, hey,
[13:30]you remember me, do you know who I am?
[13:32]Oh, I think I recognize you.
[13:33]It would be, do you know who I am?
[13:35]And she, you know, her body's tightening up.
[13:37]Her, she cleanses her jaw.
[13:39]The doctor said she's going to break her jaw
[13:41]because she grinds her teeth so hard.
[13:43]I just saw a friend of mine who he and he did just come up.
[13:48]I should say a friend of mine, but I haven't seen him for years.
[13:51]I ran into him and he came over and said,
[13:53]oh, I don't know if you know my mom is Alzheimer's.
[13:56]He said she's an innursing home and they just called
[13:58]to say she forgot how to eat.
[14:00]And that's what happens.
[14:01]I mean, if the Alzheimer's lives long enough,
[14:05]their whole body forgets everything.
[14:06]So at the end, the way they die is they forget how to swallow.
[14:10]And that's, they get some tubes to feed them until they die.
[14:13]I mean, it's a terrible thing.
[14:14]Oh, my God.
[14:15]Yeah, that's horrible.
[14:17]So what happened, you wrote in one of your essays
[14:19]that you were at the Jewish quarter and Italy.
[14:23]Yes.
[14:24]And it made you realize that you wanted to reconnect
[14:26]with your mom and all her love Italian language.
[14:30]And everything tell me about what happened there.
[14:31]So my wife and I just went to Italy.
[14:34]And we were in Rome when we went to the Jewish quarter.
[14:38]And the second we walked into the Jewish quarter
[14:40]and now if you've been there, but it's very small.
[14:44]My mother was with me right away.
[14:45]Because that is where she would have gone first.
[14:49]You don't.
[14:49]Are you a son?
[14:50]No, no, she was.
[14:51]Yeah, she was.
[14:52]They're in time, dude.
[14:52]There are two of the pictures.
[14:53]I don't think we're a time to choose.
[14:56]So she would, anytime she would go anywhere,
[14:59]when she would come back, there'd be some discussion
[15:01]about some synagogue, right?
[15:02]Could be anywhere in the world that she'd go.
[15:04]So when we walked in, I was like, if she was here right now,
[15:07]between the Hebrew letters everywhere
[15:11]to the model branch, which my great grandmother used
[15:13]to make, to just having this small group of people,
[15:17]she would have, this small group of Jewish people in this,
[15:20]incredibly Christian country.
[15:22]She would have just been all over that and loved it.
[15:25]And so my wife and I have been talking for a while,
[15:28]my wife should push you to go see my mother,
[15:30]which I appreciate and she's right about it.
[15:33]But at that moment, I was like, OK, she's with me.
[15:36]And it also, one of the things I've written about, I guess,
[15:41]and maybe talked about it a little bit,
[15:43]I was at a funeral, this is now years ago.
[15:47]And the father, a father, a grandfather died.
[15:52]And we were at central synagogue for the funeral.
[15:55]And obviously it was incredibly sad, right?
[15:57]Because funerals are terribly sad in somebody
[15:59]that everybody loved so much died.
[16:02]And we sat there and the kids got up, the grand kids got up
[16:08]and they talked about this man, and how much they loved him
[16:11]and how much he mean to them.
[16:12]And they told all these stories about how funny he was,
[16:16]how incredibly he was in this way.
[16:18]Business colleagues got up.
[16:19]Friends got up.
[16:20]And just this, you saw this whole picture of this person
[16:23]in their whole life.
[16:25]And I was sitting there.
[16:27]And while I was like sad and felt terribly for the family,
[16:32]then I watched everybody come together for this family.
[16:35]And so you had, I don't know, 500 people,
[16:37]however many people were there that all were there
[16:39]to celebrate this man and to be there for this family.
[16:43]And then I realized that with Alzheimer's disease,
[16:46]you don't have that.
[16:47]Like my, I've said this to my wife,
[16:49]when my mother finally dies, physically dies,
[16:52]I'm not sure there'll be anybody at the funeral.
[16:53]Right?
[16:54]Well, I'm not sure how many people really will be
[16:56]that get so many people have left and gone on with their lives.
[16:59]Like she's gone to so many people.
[17:01]It's like it's as if, I mean, even for me,
[17:03]it's as if she died years ago.
[17:05]And then do you remember all the stories, right?
[17:07]Because they're not like fresh in your mind anymore.
[17:09]You know, it's almost like talking about, you know,
[17:11]somebody who died years ago.
[17:13]And so, but with Alzheimer's, you see that people,
[17:16]how long can you expect, you know, somebody's friend
[17:20]to sit around, you know, and kind of while this person's
[17:23]disappearing to just be there?
[17:25]And my father has said that too, that, you know,
[17:27]when she first got diagnosed with Alzheimer's,
[17:30]there were so many friends around.
[17:32]And then one at a time, they would kind of go off.
[17:34]And my dad, you know, he, he, I don't know,
[17:37]if he 100% understood it, he'd be like,
[17:39]this doesn't seem fair.
[17:41]Everybody's leaving me.
[17:42]I got this to myself.
[17:43]I would sit there and be like, dad, what are they gonna do?
[17:45]Like they have their own lives,
[17:46]their own things to go to.
[17:47]They can't just sit around and watch mom.
[17:51]But it's a very difficult thing when I was sitting
[17:53]in the Jewish corner.
[17:54]I think something that went, I was like, okay,
[17:57]she may be gone.
[17:58]But as if she had already died, you know,
[18:00]she's always gonna be with me, right?
[18:02]And so as we were sitting there walking
[18:05]through the Jewish corner, talking about her,
[18:08]you know, that's how you, I guess, keep people alive.
[18:12]I guess.
[18:13]No, there should be some, like the process of morning,
[18:17]right?
[18:17]It starts so much earlier for you.
[18:19]And yet you can't get the vindicate,
[18:21]you can't get the emotional,
[18:23]like there's so many societal things
[18:25]where people gather together.
[18:26]Exactly.
[18:27]You know, and yet you miss that.
[18:28]That's right.
[18:29]You're like set sort of silently suffering.
[18:31]It's very must be, it feels so lonely in a way
[18:34]to be mourning the loss of a person's slowly versus.
[18:37]Exactly.
[18:38]And it's not a real morning, right?
[18:40]Because there's still there, there's still there.
[18:42]But you're still the morning.
[18:43]I mean, it's still losing like the soul of somebody,
[18:46]like the soul is slipping away.
[18:48]Under percent.
[18:48]To be, you don't know when it happens, right?
[18:50]Like it's, it's, it's, it's this thing
[18:53]that where you're, you're swatching, right?
[18:56]The person who's disappeared in one day,
[18:58]you're like, oh, I, that person's now gone,
[19:00]but you didn't know when that thing.
[19:02]I've said this to my wife.
[19:03]I've said, you know, I almost feel like
[19:05]if somebody gets diagnosed with Alzheimer's,
[19:08]you should go have like a memorial service brain pen,
[19:11]let the person be there, do something like so.
[19:13]Everybody can come around because then it's just,
[19:16]it's just a slow, usually slow,
[19:19]especially if it hits early in somebody's life,
[19:23]just like this slow decline.
[19:25]I think we should have a memorial services
[19:27]for everybody while they're alive.
[19:29]It'd be nicer.
[19:29]I mean, why not hear all the good stories, you know?
[19:32]I mean, my grandmother keeps losing 95,
[19:35]keeps being like, all right, read me your speech.
[19:37]Let me hear it.
[19:38]And I'm like, I'm not ready to write it yet.
[19:39]And she's like, come on, come on, I don't want to miss it.
[19:42]You know, let me read it again.
[19:43]I get it too.
[19:44]It's like, so if you could go back in time, like 15 years
[19:48]ago to say before when your mom and you
[19:50]had just this great relationship and whatever,
[19:52]and would you handle things any differently?
[19:55]Would you tell her any, would you be a different type
[19:58]of stand, would you tell her?
[20:00]What was to come, how would you do anything differently?
[20:03]I don't know if I'd do anything different with my mom.
[20:05]I mean, my mother and I were incredibly close
[20:08]my whole life.
[20:08]I mean, she was definitely, you know,
[20:10]she was my confidant and she was my...
[20:12]Are you the only one?
[20:13]Are you the only one?
[20:14]I'm a sister who's eight and a half years younger than I am.
[20:16]OK.
[20:18]My mother would, we were incredibly close.
[20:20]And we look a lot alike and we,
[20:23]and we were very similar in a lot of ways.
[20:27]So I'm not sure I would do, I hope
[20:29]I was a good son or I think I was.
[20:32]I think I do different things now since she got Alzheimer's
[20:35]disease.
[20:36]But I do think that, you know, I think having a conversation
[20:41]with the one thing maybe I would have done
[20:43]is to say, what would you really want?
[20:44]And this is going to sound really horrible.
[20:46]And it's just that this is from my perspective.
[20:49]If somebody told me today, you have Alzheimer's disease now.
[20:53]And now, like not, you're going to have it in 20 years,
[20:56]but you have it now.
[20:57]And you're just going to start forgetting everything
[20:59]and everything's going, your body's going to shut down.
[21:02]I really do think I would say, OK, at some point,
[21:05]you've got to find a way just to like, for everybody,
[21:07]for me, for you, for the family, for friends.
[21:10]Just let me die.
[21:11]Find a way to let that happen.
[21:13]Because like her life now is, there is no life.
[21:17]And my father, I mean, he, you know, it took him a long time.
[21:22]It was incredibly hard on him.
[21:23]And he went and got help early on.
[21:26]But he now has another, you know, he has another life.
[21:29]And he's doing a lot of things.
[21:31]He's still taking care of her.
[21:32]She's still living at home.
[21:34]He's still there, but that's so hard for him.
[21:36]And so hard for him to watch it all.
[21:38]And for me, for my sister and my kids, my oldest two kids,
[21:44]they know her.
[21:45]They knew her because she was still kind of around in there
[21:48]when they were little.
[21:49]But my three youngest, they, I mean,
[21:51]they talk about her a little bit, but they have no idea.
[21:53]And we don't bring them there.
[21:55]Because I don't know what, yeah.
[21:57]I mean, I don't know what it would even mean to them.
[22:01]So I don't think I would say anything.
[22:02]I don't think I would do anything different.
[22:04]I mean, I'm sure there were little things here and there.
[22:06]I would do differently looking that.
[22:09]But I do think it's more of how do you deal with it moving forward.
[22:14]So I took, that's what I think I mentioned to you.
[22:17]I took that 23andMe test that says I'm at higher risk for Alzheimer's
[22:20]later in life and I have Alzheimer's in my family.
[22:23]Knowing that, in my head at least, I've been like, well,
[22:26]let's say my risk is higher when I'm 75, right?
[22:29]And now I'm almost 42.
[22:30]So what's that like, I have 33 good years?
[22:33]That's like 33 Christmas vacations.
[22:35]Where should I go?
[22:36]Did you work?
[22:37]Work backwards.
[22:38]Because after that, it's kind of like not to say,
[22:40]I mean, not to say it will definitely happen.
[22:42]And you know, but I think for so many people,
[22:47]it's a possibility out there.
[22:48]And it just maybe helps live life better now.
[22:51]I mean, whether or not it's 75 or, I mean, obviously,
[22:55]any of us could get in a bad car tomorrow.
[22:56]And everyone has their expiration date at some point.
[22:59]Yes.
[22:59]How do you live life today knowing that either this type of thing
[23:02]is coming or just something is coming?
[23:04]How do you keep that in every day and sort of be more present
[23:08]or mindful of whatever?
[23:10]For me, I think, I try not to think about what would happen
[23:14]if I or somebody else got Alzheimer's
[23:16]used because to your point, you could get it by art tomorrow.
[23:18]So I do think just, you know, you just got to live life
[23:20]as the fullest.
[23:21]I do think, though, when you think about how many,
[23:26]so life expectancy is getting longer.
[23:30]So we're seeing more and more people getting Alzheimer's
[23:36]disease, saying things, some of that's from longevity.
[23:38]There's other people that are talking about all the different
[23:41]drugs people take now, not like to help them sleep
[23:44]or anxiety, you could also have an impact.
[23:46]But I think that focusing on, for everybody,
[23:49]I think that for trying to find a cure at the end of the day
[23:55]is so important.
[23:55]And if you look at how much money the federal government
[23:58]spends on diseases and Alzheimer's is so small, which
[24:04]to me is crazy because you have, I mean, all diseases are bad.
[24:07]And we want, I mean, if we could have a cure for every disease,
[24:10]that would be amazing.
[24:10]But so many people are impact.
[24:13]So, you know, I don't know how many it is exactly today.
[24:16]But let's say it's five million people with Alzheimer's.
[24:19]If you think about how many other people are impacted by that,
[24:23]their families and everything else, you know,
[24:25]you could be talking about 20, 30, 40 million people.
[24:29]But I think, obviously, everybody should live life
[24:31]to their fullest and enjoy every moment because you never
[24:35]know when it's going to end.
[24:36]But you never, but that goes for not just us.
[24:40]It goes for us looking at, because who knows if somebody
[24:45]that we love, yes, I mean, that's, I watched,
[24:48]I mean, with my mother just watching that happen.
[24:51]I'm so sorry.
[24:52]No, thank you.
[24:53]No, I'm so awful.
[24:54]I'm sorry how to go through this.
[24:56]And I mean, the good that's come out of it
[25:00]is your ability to share so honestly and openly
[25:04]with so many people in the writing.
[25:05]And do you have any other aspirations with your writing?
[25:10]You know, I think this would be such a beautiful memoir.
[25:13]I appreciate it.
[25:13]So I'll say that's two things on that.
[25:16]The way that I generally write is I just, like,
[25:19]the thing I wrote about my mother and the Jewish quarter,
[25:22]it just, it came to me.
[25:24]I had my phone, I go onto my notes while I'm sitting in the car,
[25:28]you know, like go into the next, you know, go into the car
[25:31]and see him or whatever, and I just type it out.
[25:33]And I write and I send it to Pam at wife.
[25:35]She reads it and then I post it, right?
[25:37]So that's, it's generally just like inspirational, right?
[25:40]Something inspires me and then I write something quickly.
[25:44]But I've always thought about publishing.
[25:46]If I really thought it would help people, you know,
[25:49]and I can't help but this is just my own personality.
[25:52]I said there and say, yeah, I wrote something
[25:54]and maybe it helps somebody, but what does it,
[25:56]is it really that meaningful, right?
[25:58]There's, but so I do think about writing
[26:01]and putting it together.
[26:01]I have no idea how I would do that, but.
[26:04]Well, I think connecting with people
[26:06]and making people feel less alone in whatever journey they're on,
[26:09]always is helpful.
[26:11]I mean, that's sort of, I don't know.
[26:13]That's like connecting with someone.
[26:14]That's right.
[26:15]I mean, I haven't even gone through this yet
[26:17]and I feel like I was so personally moved by what you wrote
[26:20]and, you know, if I were actually, anyway,
[26:24]I think if I keep it up, it's beautiful.
[26:26]I just had to read one more passage that you wrote to close.
[26:30]It was the same essay that I started by reading the one
[26:33]about my mom's making eyes.
[26:35]You wrote, I turned from the picture,
[26:38]even if you had been looking at a picture of your mom back
[26:41]when she was fully present.
[26:42]I turned for the picture and walked back to my mom.
[26:45]I smiled at her and looked into her eyes.
[26:47]They were vacant.
[26:48]Behind her eyes is a disease,
[26:50]a disease slowly eating away at her brain,
[26:53]although the frosty with which the disease is acting
[26:55]is now increasing in strength and speed.
[26:57]I still wanted to connect with her right then.
[26:59]It was my birthday and if only for one moment,
[27:02]I wanted my mom back.
[27:03]I wanted her to know how much I love her
[27:05]and how much I appreciate everything she did for me.
[27:07]I wanted her to know how much I miss her
[27:09]and have so often I would do anything
[27:11]just for a hug from her or to hear her amazing words
[27:14]it was them and understanding.
[27:15]But as I stood there smiling at her
[27:17]and looking into her eyes, it was clear
[27:19]that my mom left some time ago.
[27:21]She was no longer there behind those vacant eyes.
[27:24]She no longer lives in that frail human frame
[27:26]that topples over.
[27:27]She no longer lives behind those eyes of stairs
[27:29]straight ahead.
[27:30]Instead, she lives within all of those people
[27:33]who she connected with and loved.
[27:34]Instead, she lives within me.
[27:37]I am so pretty.
[27:39]I mean, it's just so beautiful.
[27:42]Thank you.
[27:43]Thank you for sharing.
[27:44]Thank you for this.
[27:45]Thanks for sharing with listeners.
[27:47]Thank you.
[27:48]Thanks, John.