Reagan has left us with crucial lesson

In a Japanese folk tale, a childless couple is sad because they cannot have children. One day, they find a baby boy inside a tiny peach. They name him Momotaro. He grows up to be a strong hero who defeats the ogres threatening his village. My father told us this story over and over when we were children. He heard it in Japan when he worked there as a translator during the post-World War II military trials.

He had no trouble learning Japanese. Researchers say that smart people, and those who keep their minds active, don’t get Alzheimer’s as easily as less-educated or mentally idle folks. In the case of my father, Joe Nappi, who died of Alzheimer’s in 1996, and in the case of Ronald Reagan, who died Saturday, the researchers were wrong. The disease is filled with ironies.

Joel Loiacono, executive director of the Alzheimer’s Association Inland Northwest Chapter, said that a brotherhood and sisterhood of people watched the news of Reagan’s death in a different way Saturday. About 36,000 women and men struggle with Alzheimer’s in the Inland Northwest, and almost 150,000 family members bear witness to their suffering. We belong to a brotherhood and sisterhood we hope no one ever has to join.

We family members notice eyes. We look into the eyes of Alzheimer’s victims and see the emptiness there. When Michael Moore accosted Charlton Heston in his documentary “Bowling for Columbine,” I felt sorry for Heston. His eyes were already emptying, though he hadn’t yet gone public with his Alzheimer’s. In the brains of victims, the roads that connect thoughts and ideas are made impassable due to cellular toxic waste. The eyes reflect this internal wreckage.

Nancy Reagan has sad and weary eyes. We in the brotherhood and sisterhood of Alzheimer’s know that despite all her money and resources, Nancy Reagan wasn’t spared the deep sorrow common to spouses of victims. Husbands and wives need to write the last chapter of their marriage together, a wise woman once told me, but for Nancy and other spouses, it’s a solitary undertaking. They are the only ones who retain the words – and the memories.

And we know that despite the people around Ronald Reagan these past 10 years, despite Secret Service agents and 24-hour care, Reagan experienced that isolation unique to Alzheimer’s victims. In an old “Twilight Zone” episode, an astronaut falls in love before being sent on a 40-year mission to outer space. He’s supposed to go into a suspended animation that will stop the aging process, but he decides not to so that he will age like his loved one left behind. The voyage is unspeakably lonely – nothing to read, no companions. That’s how lonely Alzheimer’s seems to me.

Before his Alzheimer’s, my father – a Gonzaga University law professor – worked every room he walked into.

By the end of his life, few friends visited him in the nursing home.

I don’t blame them. Someone once said that Alzheimer’s is as scary to older people as AIDS is to the young. Sam Grashio, a World War II hero, and Jack Evoy, a Jesuit priest and psychology professor, braved a snowstorm to be at my father’s side for the last rites.

These men are both dead now, but I have never forgotten their courage.

In the Japanese folk tale, the child found in the peach saves the village. Who would have guessed this kind of heroic end?

For many of us, Reagan’s most important years were not those of his presidency, but those of his last decade. Who would have guessed this kind of selfless end? He went public with his Alzheimer’s and helped the cause immensely, raising money and awareness. The cause needs both.

As the population ages, the number of victims is expected to grow 70 percent by 2030, which means an estimated 7.7 million victims. There is no cure. And no treatments keep it at bay for long.

Reagan and his family let the world know what happens on that long voyage to the inner space of Alzheimer’s and why it must be stopped.

The world listened. For this, we offer thanks and a sweet goodbye, Mr. Reagan.