By Sallie Satterthwaite

This column published in 1993, shortly after the 40-year reunion of my high school class. I've edited it slightly, and when you've read it, you'll understand why I'm submitting it again....

Ann's story:

Ann's 58, and she has Alzheimer's disease. We saw each other last month for the first time in many years.

An editor once told me, “A writer is only as good as her editor,” and although the idea flies in the face of my conviction that we must accept responsibility for ourselves, I believe there is truth in what she said.

Ann was my first editor, on our high school paper. My two years on “The Torch” hooked me on seeing my words in print.

I look at “The Torch” today and find it a good little paper, upbeat in tone and cleanly edited. My stuff wasn't bad. Either I wrote pretty well — or I had a good editor.

Ann was short and feisty, with a biting sense of humor. She had dated Wayne since ninth grade, and they were one of those couples who hung out together but never hung on each other. Whatever romantic moments they had were strictly in private.

She was one of six kids in a farm family near town. Wayne was an only child, his father a weatherman on a Harrisburg radio station. Wayne's nickname, of course, was “Rain.”

At the 1993 reunion, I learned more about their childhoods than I had known back in our school days.

Wayne talked about how much he enjoyed the hubbub at Ann's house, where, as eldest, she discharged her duties at the top of her voice.

“At our house the loudest sound heard after dinner was the turning of the pages of my father's newspaper,” Wayne said. “I thought everybody's house was like that, until I went to Ann's.”

“I know what you mean,” chimed in Nancy, Ann's best friend, and also an only. “I'd go over and sit down to supper — they never noticed an extra child — and I'd politely wait to have food passed as I did at home. As soon as grace was said, every hand at the table grabbed at the chicken. I was lucky to get a wing!”

Wayne and Ann married after college, eventually earning Ph.D.s, and at one point lived with three young sons in Singapore, where Wayne taught at Trinity Theological College. Ann cofounded and operated a day-care program for adults newly discharged from mental health facilities.

When they returned to the States, they became leaders in the gender equality movement, helped establish a free school for adolescents, practicing together as psychotherapists in Colorado. Wayne's credits include published poetry and collaboration on a book on rehabilitating men who abuse their spouses.

Then came Ann's diagnosis. Or was it a sentence?

“What made you go in for testing, Ann?” I asked, when I realized she was willing to talk about it.

“I was forgetting things, and answering questions inappropriately,” she said.

“I do that all the time,” I said glibly. “What's the difference between just being wifty and suspecting Alzheimer's?”

“It was different,” she assured me. “At first we thought maybe a tumor, but tests ruled that out. They ran the test for Alzheimer's, and when the doctor called us into his office, he was crying.

“ `You're too young,' he said. But the diagnosis was positive.”

“Do you have a family history?” I asked, and immediately realized that I was saying: “If you have a family history of Alzheimer's, then that explains it. I won't have to worry because I don't."

“No. No family history.”

A pause. “What did you do?” I asked.

“I went home and took spatulas and wooden spoons out of the kitchen, and screamed and cried and beat the stuffing out of all the pillows on the bed until I couldn't cry any more.”

“Oh, Annie, I can't imagine how angry you must have been. How are you now? Do you feel okay?”

“I haven't got lost yet, if that's what you mean. But I will.”

I had the feeling she has told her story often, to anyone who'll listen, and I know that helps her cope. All I could think was, how unfair that this brilliant, clever mind was going to erode away — and she'll know it's happening.

During the reunion weekend, I noticed Ann occasionally turning to Wayne for an explanation of something someone had said, but it would have been unremarkable had we not known.

And we still joked and poked fun at each other: “Did you ever learn to write headlines that fit?” “You know I made you look better than you were!”

Not for nothing were these two elected “Wittiest” in our class Who's Who.

Retiring to as stress-free a life as possible to care for Ann, Wayne dropped in one day to see the editor of his county's weekly, and came out with a job as news reporter. He covers county government, planning commission and the like, and proudly showed me his press card. He also serves an Episcopal mission as a deacon.

We swapped lies about our journalistic endeavors, and Ann's eyes sparkled with pleasure. And before we parted, swearing not to lose touch again, I said the only thing I could think of: “Hang in, you two. They'll lick this thing yet, and in time for you.”

“At least I haven't got lost yet,” Ann said, again. “But I will.”

Update: She did, often, before she died in 1995. And they haven't licked “this thing.” Wayne has written a book — Tears in God's Bottle: Reflections on Alzheimer's Caregiving — about the deep wellsprings of Biblical spirituality he found to sustain him through the nightmare of their journey together.

Please consider this my personal invitation to you to come and meet my friend, Wayne Ewing, a remarkable survivor, when he comes to Peachtree City next week. See Page 1B of the Healthwise Section for dates and times.

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