Coping with Alzheimer's: Family's love helps pierce the thickest cloud - Sarasota Herald-Tribune

<p>The awakening of a mind cast adrift by dementia occurred during a race for ice cream down a nursing home hallway.</p><p>Giuliana Garcia, an adorable 1-year-old with a red plastic flower in her dark black hair, giggled as she vibrantly pushed a walker and then looked back to her great-grandmother, who was struggling behind.</p><p>Maria Garcia, an 87-year-old porcelain doll of a lady, also pushed a walker, her fingers severely arthritic and her steps painfully slow, but the joy on her face, the sparkle in her eyes, made her therapists clap until they started to cry.</p><p>“I'm going to get you,” Maria said to Giuliana. “I'm going to get you.”</p><p>Only weeks before, Maria needed a mechanical lift to get out of bed. She was surly, slapping and screaming at nurses. She spoke only in Spanish. She wouldn't eat. She spit out her pills.</p><p>She plunged deeper into her impenetrable world of Alzheimer's-related dementia, and no one thought she would ever emerge.</p><p>In April came the most heartbreaking day of all: She attended the funeral of her 104-year-old mother, the person she had spent more than eight decades with, and she didn't know where she was or why she was there.</p><p>Then, two months ago, the therapists at the Springs at Lake Pointe Woods in Sarasota had an idea. </p><p>If Maria's immediate family became regularly involved with her therapy, and if they continually praised and supported her, it might awaken something hidden deep inside.</p><p>And that's just what happened: Something stirred.</p><p>Now she sings songs by Julio Iglesias, laughs heartily at jokes, applies her own red Revlon lipstick, eats strawberry ice cream in the parlor with Giuliana, and takes very special care of her baby, a stuffed brown bear named Georgie. </p><p>Susan Penar says she has never seen a turnaround so profound in 42 years as an occupational therapist.</p><p>“To me Alzheimer's is a cloud, and through love we can penetrate that cloud,” says Albert Garcia, Maria's son.</p><p>“We may not make it go away, but we'll take a lot of that dark gray out of it and make it into the beautiful light we have now.”</p><p><b>Still had fun</p><p></b></p><p>She never said a word at her mother's funeral, never blinked back a tear or dabbed her eyes, never mentioned her name.</p><p>Nothing, not even when Father Fausto Stampiglia said, “We are now going to pray for the repose of the soul of Rosario Schielzeth.”</p><p>Rosario Schielzeth was Maria's mother, and their touching relationship, detailed in a Herald-Tribune story last June, generated thousands of comments from around the world.</p><p>Maria and Rosario lived either with each other in the same house, or across the street from one another, for roughly 85 years.</p><p>For the last 12 they lived together in a house in Sarasota, and even though she was 104, Rosario still took care of Maria, whose dementia has been severe for the past six years.</p><p>Yes, they were 104 and 86, respectively, but those are just numbers, and the two still had plenty of fun. They played bingo every night, watched “American Idol,” and even wore funny glasses at a 3-D movie about penguins. One time they trekked to the beach.</p><p>Maria was born in Costa Rica in 1925 — she was Miss Costa Rica at 17 and painted a stunning version of da Vinci's Last Supper at the same age. She moved to San Francisco with her mother in 1943.</p><p>Even when Maria had been married for five years, and had sons Albert and James, she still lived across the street from her mom.</p><p>Maria's husband was a musician with a pencil-thin mustache, and after he ran off with an airline stewardess sometime in the 1950s she moved back in with Rosario. And that's how it remained for the decades that followed: Maria and Rosario, together.</p><p>In late January, Rosario was opening the patio door to let Frankie the family dog inside when she fell down and broke her hip. She was taken to the Springs for rehab.</p><p>Maria remained at home with the caregivers, but she soon began feeling sick and was also brought to the Springs.</p><p>And once she got there, well, where else was she going to stay? </p><p>Mother and daughter shared the same room, of course, but it was no longer cute and charming. When Rosario stopped eating, Maria did, too. When Rosario spit out her pills, Maria did, too. They seemed to take delight in one another's defiant behavior.</p><p><b>‘She knew'</p><p></b></p><p>On April 1, Rosario whispered to Janet Underwood, the assistant director of nursing at the Springs, that she was not going to make it to June 13 — her 105th birthday.</p><p>She wanted to go home now — today.</p><p>She wanted to die.</p><p>“She knew,” Underwood says. </p><p>The next day her breathing became shallow and then it started to make a rattling sound. She gently squeezed the hand of Christian, her great-grandson, and closed her eyes.</p><p>She died in her bed.</p><p>In the living room, sitting in a chair watching television, was Maria.</p><p>Maria never knew, and when the funeral home came to claim Rosario's body she was sound asleep in her bed.</p><p>The family debated whether to tell Maria, and then realized maybe they didn't have to.</p><p>“You could feel in the atmosphere that she knew something had happened,” says Christine Garcia, Albert's wife. “There were no words to explain it. You could feel it sitting with her.”</p><p>Maria wore a floral dress to her mother's funeral at St. Martha Catholic Church in Sarasota on April 6.</p><p>She sat next to Albert and held his hand as he cried.</p><p><b>Singing, clapping</p><p></b></p><p>Maria is now sitting in the spacious therapy room at the Springs. Georgie the Bear is safe and sound in her lap.</p><p>She has just finished brushing her thick gray hair and is wearing the 425 soft silver red lipstick by Revlon that she applied herself from the makeup kit on the table.</p><p>When someone tries to take her photo, she playfully sticks out her tongue.</p><p>Albert says to her, "Mom, it's not how old you are but . . .”</p><p>“. . . it's how old you feel,” Maria responds.</p><p>“How old do you feel?” asks Penar, the therapist.</p><p>“I don't know,” Maria says. “I don't look at that. I just do whatever I want. I don't have to tell anybody and if you don't like it too bad.”</p><p>Everyone in the room laughs.</p><p>“When you laugh it's because you feel very good,” Maria says matter-of-factly.</p><p>Albert Garcia, son Christian and wife Christine attend all of Maria's therapy sessions. They are there Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 2:30, and the difference it has made has been astonishing, the therapists say.</p><p>“We all have choices in life, and that's the choice we made,” Albert Garcia says. “ ‘No, we're not going to let her go down.' It's just the opposite, she's going to thrive.”</p><p>When Maria lived with her mother and two caregivers, she had some family support but no consistent physical or mental stimulation. For the last year, the family says, she was in front of a television most of the day.</p><p>Now she is getting stimulation and support. </p><p>“It just seems to be awakening all of her senses,” Penar says.</p><p>Sometimes Kjirsten Erickson, Maria's physical therapist, will walk by her room at night and hear her laughing and singing. </p><p>“Now she's one person,” Erickson says.</p><p>Now, she walks down the hallway and reads the signs on the walls.</p><p>Now, she counts the plants and birds outside in the courtyard and loves to look at the animals in National Geographic, all except the ugly monkeys.</p><p>Now, she sings “Here Comes the Bride” and “Amapola” and can belt out three quick verses of “La Cucaracha.”</p><p>Now, she's clapping at the Father's Day performance by the Australian dry cleaner from downtown Sarasota who does an uncanny Sinatra.</p><p>But what really makes her smile is Georgie the Bear, the stuffed animal the family purchased at IKEA for $20.</p><p><b>Georgie</p><p></b></p><p>Maybe it's not as childish as it looks. Maybe, in her world, Georgie represents someone she can care for, someone who needs her, someone she can make feel happy. All of the things her mother was to her, all of the things her family is to her right now.</p><p>“Do you like my baby?” she constantly asks.</p><p>There are also real reminders of how hard it is for her.</p><p>As she tries to grab her wheelchair for a short therapy walk across the room, she says to Erickson, “I can't make it up.” </p><p>“We'll help you,” Erickson says.</p><p>“My feet hurt,” Maria says.</p><p>“I know,” Erickson says. “I'm sorry.”</p><p>“It's too much,” Maria says. “I can't. You don't know how much it hurts. Oh my knees. Oh my back.”</p><p>Only once in the last six years has she given any indication she remembers anything from her past.</p><p>Only once it came out: She remembered Albert crying as he chased after his father while he was walking out on his mother.</p><p>In some ways, the family figures, her dementia is a blessing. She doesn't remember the disappointments of her life, can't comprehend hurt and sorrow and death, even Rosario's, especially Rosario's.</p><p>Life to her now is singing Julio Iglesias songs and counting birds in the courtyard and racing her great-granddaughter to the ice cream parlor for a scoop of strawberry.</p><p>And maybe that's all right.</p><p>Around 5 p.m. on a recent rainy afternoon she is sitting alone at her table in the dining room. Albert walks over to say goodbye and gently kisses the top of her head.</p><p>She looks up at her son and smiles, Georgie the Bear safe and sound in her care.</p>