http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/26/opinion/a-marriage-to-remember.html?_r=0

http://nyti.ms/1pA0T0k

My mother, Pam White, has had a full life. In her 67 years, she has raised three happy children, enjoyed a rewarding career as a social worker and been a devoted partner to my father, Ed. But, as she puts it, “There’s just one little glitch.” In 2009, at age 61, she was told she had early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.
After my mother’s diagnosis, I moved back into my parents’ house near Boston to help care for her. As my mother started to share her nascent experience with Alzheimer’s with me, I began filming our intimate conversations. For the next four years, we recorded both the big events and the small details of my family’s changing reality.
One of the most striking things that Alzheimer’s has revealed is the strength of my parents’ marriage, even as it alters their relationship forever. This process has been both painful and beautiful to watch. With this Op-Doc video, I wanted to share that complexity.
After retiring from his career in finance this January, my father is now my mother’s primary caregiver, with help five days a week from a wonderful home aide, Eva. My father is a loyal husband with a strong sense of duty. These extraordinary qualities now make us worry for his own welfare as he devotes himself to his wife in this new and impossible situation.Continue reading the main story

RECENT COMMENTS

John Maher

3 days ago
What happened to Pam could happen to any of us. If my wife became disabled in any way, I hope I could be as patient and kind as Ed appears...

S.T.

3 days ago
This is a beautiful tribute to the filmmaker's parents. My mother, who is now 87, had a series of strokes over the last decade, and now...

Rhonda Johnson

3 days ago
Thank you for sharing with us. It shows a wonderful love in a very difficult situation. Again, thank youSEE ALL COMMENTS WRITE A COMMENT
Caring for someone with Alzheimer’s is a long and humbling experience. Perhaps most painful is the underlying feeling of futility; you know it’s only going to get harder. Interviews with my father became opportunities to talk about the difficult choices all families dealing with this disease are forced to make. As the disease progressed and my mother’s dependency on him intensified, our recorded conversations also became a space for us to reflect and grieve.
The experience of caring for someone with Alzheimer’s can be incredibly isolating, at a time when you need support the most. We are grateful that this process has helped us to come together as a family and as a community to celebrate that most precious gift of all: our memories.

Banker White and his wife, Anna Fitch, are a producing team who live in San Francisco. Their full-length documentary about their family’s experience with Alzheimer’s, “The Genius of Marian,” will be broadcast in September on the PBS series “POV.”
Op-Docs is a forum for short, opinionated documentaries, produced with creative latitude by independent filmmakers and artists. Learn more about Op-Docs and how to submit to the series.

Alzheimer's effects on a wonderful marriage
A son documents the heartbreaking changes his parents experience as his mother's disease progresses. 'Her walk is now a shuffle' »

A Marriage to Remember
by Op-Docs 8:25 mins
In this short documentary, the filmmaker Banker White explores how Alzheimer’s disease has revealed the strength of his parents’ marriage.