As I drove into work this evening I was listening to Mike Francesca on WFAN. The big story of the day wasn’t the LeBron James led Lakers clinging to slim playoff hopes, or what the Giants and Jets would be doing in the upcoming NFL draft, or even about the Phillies Bryce Harper potentially tampering, it was about the furthering decline of a winemaker from California
Ok that winemaker is baseball hall of famer and Mets great Tom Seaver, and today his family announced that the 74 year old would be retiring from public life due to dementia associated with Alzheimer's Disease. While Seaver pitched most of his career before I was a fan, he is a beloved name in Mets lore. He is on our Mount Rushmore, our Babe Ruth.
But this news reminds me of someone who also loved baseball but had a about 311 less major league wins, my grandfather who also about 13 years ago succumbed to Alzheimer's. The same disease that will one day kill Tom Seaver.
I think there is a lot written about the horrors of cancer. It is a horrible disease that destroys your body from within, and the medicine that fights it is also destroying you. Your family gets to watch your body wither away. It's terrible. I was too young to see that happen to my father, but I stood by and watched it happen to my father in law. But even to the end he was still himself.
On the other hand Alzheimer's destroys a person’s soul. Their essence. It is equally as painful watching a basically healthy person who doesn’t remember the names of their children or grandchildren, as someone who is too weak to drink water on their own.
Every summer when we would go to Puerto Rico to visit our grandparents. Abuelo was ready for us, almost as if he was waiting all year until we got back. Before we arrived he bought cases of Coke, Old Colony Uva and Orange Crush for us to enjoy while we were there.
He would take us all around town, his Little Big Boy and Big Little Boy. Being obsessed with baseball, and not able to read Spanish he would help me translate baseball stores in the newspapers. By default he became a Mets fan, Howard Johnson was his favorite. We watched the major league all star game together every summer.
Then we all got older. My brother and I stayed in New York during the summers. Eventually Abuelo moved to Connecticut with my aunts. He was now only an hour drive away. But I was busy. Either with school, or with a certain special lady, or the beginning of my career, life. As he aged he became more and more forgetful, he was just taking off and then not knowing where he was. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and he moved into a really great nursing home. We would go visit him, and the man sitting there in a sweat suit looked like my grandfather, smiled like him and sounded like him. But it wasn't him. You could see it in his eyes. That wasn’t Jose Nieves anymore.
He was like that for several years. We were just strangers who sort of looked like the pictures on his wall. He smiled and was pleasant. The rides back home were always worse than being there.
I remember it clear as day, Ani and I were taking our newly leased car on a impromptu road trip to get cheesesteaks in Philadelphia. When my mom called, Abuelo had fallen and broke his hip. She was heading to New Haven via train, we turned around at the next exit and headed there as well. Over the next weeks in the hospital as will happen with 90 somethings, other things started happening. He developed pneumonia and passed away. It was terribly sad, for us. But I like to think that it was a huge relief for him to finally be unlocked from his shell.
This disease doesn't discriminate, it destroys soft spoken accountants and three time cy young award winners alike. I hate to say that the Seaver’s are facing a horrible few years.
Alzheimer's is a terrible disease both for the victim and for everyone who gets to watch someone they love forget them.
Ok that winemaker is baseball hall of famer and Mets great Tom Seaver, and today his family announced that the 74 year old would be retiring from public life due to dementia associated with Alzheimer's Disease. While Seaver pitched most of his career before I was a fan, he is a beloved name in Mets lore. He is on our Mount Rushmore, our Babe Ruth.
But this news reminds me of someone who also loved baseball but had a about 311 less major league wins, my grandfather who also about 13 years ago succumbed to Alzheimer's. The same disease that will one day kill Tom Seaver.
I think there is a lot written about the horrors of cancer. It is a horrible disease that destroys your body from within, and the medicine that fights it is also destroying you. Your family gets to watch your body wither away. It's terrible. I was too young to see that happen to my father, but I stood by and watched it happen to my father in law. But even to the end he was still himself.
On the other hand Alzheimer's destroys a person’s soul. Their essence. It is equally as painful watching a basically healthy person who doesn’t remember the names of their children or grandchildren, as someone who is too weak to drink water on their own.
Every summer when we would go to Puerto Rico to visit our grandparents. Abuelo was ready for us, almost as if he was waiting all year until we got back. Before we arrived he bought cases of Coke, Old Colony Uva and Orange Crush for us to enjoy while we were there.
He would take us all around town, his Little Big Boy and Big Little Boy. Being obsessed with baseball, and not able to read Spanish he would help me translate baseball stores in the newspapers. By default he became a Mets fan, Howard Johnson was his favorite. We watched the major league all star game together every summer.
Then we all got older. My brother and I stayed in New York during the summers. Eventually Abuelo moved to Connecticut with my aunts. He was now only an hour drive away. But I was busy. Either with school, or with a certain special lady, or the beginning of my career, life. As he aged he became more and more forgetful, he was just taking off and then not knowing where he was. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and he moved into a really great nursing home. We would go visit him, and the man sitting there in a sweat suit looked like my grandfather, smiled like him and sounded like him. But it wasn't him. You could see it in his eyes. That wasn’t Jose Nieves anymore.
He was like that for several years. We were just strangers who sort of looked like the pictures on his wall. He smiled and was pleasant. The rides back home were always worse than being there.
I remember it clear as day, Ani and I were taking our newly leased car on a impromptu road trip to get cheesesteaks in Philadelphia. When my mom called, Abuelo had fallen and broke his hip. She was heading to New Haven via train, we turned around at the next exit and headed there as well. Over the next weeks in the hospital as will happen with 90 somethings, other things started happening. He developed pneumonia and passed away. It was terribly sad, for us. But I like to think that it was a huge relief for him to finally be unlocked from his shell.
This disease doesn't discriminate, it destroys soft spoken accountants and three time cy young award winners alike. I hate to say that the Seaver’s are facing a horrible few years.
Alzheimer's is a terrible disease both for the victim and for everyone who gets to watch someone they love forget them.
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