Jeff

Jeff has escaped, and that--in the scheme of things--is good news. We’ve been missing him for many, many years, and did not wish for him to linger in the no-man’s-land of deep dementia. Truth is, no one can say exactly what that experience is like from the subject’s point of view, but I do know that Jeff as I knew him would not have wished for it to continue.

It is interesting now to carry on and greet the world with the sense of release that is the strongest piece of what I’m feeling since he stopped breathing at 10:25 am, on October 12, as I sat beside his bed. The community knows that Jeff Clement has died, and they received this news, fittingly, with surprise and sadness...without being able to trace immediately just how long it had been since they’d seen him functioning on all cylinders, or seen him at all for that matter.

People who’ve dealt intimately with dementia know, better than others, why I have, as a widow, a more cheerful than average response to their expressed condolences. It’s been roughly 10 years from the early troubling personality changes to now, and I have felt--over that course--the full brunt of every feeling you might imagine gets squeezed out of the Alzheimer’s spousing experience. But I am stoic, and have a preference for emotionally strategizing my way out of negative feelings wherever I can...so the tolls paid do not always show.

There is no question that for those he loved, Jeff would want us to uncover every speck of happy, inquisitiveness, exploration, and worth we can in the years each of us has left. Go team.