Writing about Alzheimers

This morning I finished a book called "When the Body Says No: Understanding the Stress-Disease Connection" by Dr. Gabor Mate. I ordered the book through an ILL system to read a chapter on Alzheimer's Disease. Only one page from the end of the book, Dr. Mate wrote of the value of cultivating one's creative self and reports how whenever he actually slowed down his frenetic life, there had been a quiet, tiny voice that encouraged him to write. Today during lunch at work, I met a woman who is a writer. When I made some comment about the drudging discipline of being a writer, she replied that the writers she knows are much more compelled to write than forced.

When I was a child, I wanted to be a writer. Other dreams came and went, but from the age of 3 when I started dictating my first stories to my mother, I wanted to be a writer. By high school, my efforts were leaning towards other areas but somehow this seed lived on, even as the wellspring of earlier worlds and stories became lost.

Now 34 years old and two degrees in music later, I find myself needing to write just to process what is happening to my father. Yet this exploration is only partially about my father and at least 95% about me, my struggle and my fears.

In the past I have written of my frustrations with the research I've read about the causes of Alzheimer's. None of the lifestyle or dietary risk factors have seemed to apply to the four members of my family who have been struck by this. The question behind the 11 page chapter on Alzheimer's that drew me to this book is, "Could early life experience, emotional repression and lifelong stress predispose to Alzheimer's?" (p. 158) Dr. Mate goes on to talk about the few studies that have been done that point to this correlation and then uses a number of case examples to illustrate his suspicion.

And here I finally see something that seems worth investigating. Emotional repression is the one characteristic that all of my relatives who had Alzheimer's clearly shared and the one quality lacking in those of similar age and gene pool who kept their marbles to the very end. I used to tell my friends that in the picture dictionary of adjectives, my dad's face would be next to the word inhibited. He had such a hard time showing affection. He only showed true and unabashed enthusiasm for politics and only showed anger when in a terrifying once-a-decade-type rage.

At first I think of how lucky I am that I am not like my dad. The illusion of safety descends. Soon honesty comes a knocking and I know that I am so much more like my dad that I might ever be able to admit. "Peas in a pod" was a phrase one friend used to describe me and my dad together. I know I have a lot inside me, so much emotion and so many thoughts striving to break through, but does anyone else know this? How much do I actually show this?

During my disastrous first teaching job after some rehearsal where I had gotten particularly excited, a little red headed tenor said to me that he was finally seeing who I really was. Had I been completely hiding myself from them for the miserable past year and a half? My voice teacher during my masters degree studies once called me an "Ice Queen" and commented that bawdy songs could be especially effective coming from me because of my general demeanor. One of my early conducting teachers commented that my problem was not technique, rather it was as if I were conducting from behind a veil.

It seems that in the eyes of others, I have quite a lot in common with my father.

Perhaps my desire to write, that little voice inside me, pushing me to get back in touch with myself, is pushing me to be honest with myself even if I feel unable to do so with anyone else.

When I look at my life and at the pursuits which have drawn me to them, these are always the pursuits that require the most openness, the most expression and the most personal and emotional risk. I do them again and again, falling and failing, round and round. Somehow the pathway was always open for me at the piano, but I didn't want the piano in that way. I wanted the harder option so that I might struggle to become myself and to learn how to let that person out in the ways that my father has never been able to.