Alzheimer's an ever-growing fear for aging Boomer generation

I'm not really a big fan of glorified romance novels, although in the course of my nightly reading to my lovely wife, we've worked our way through Danielle Steel, Nora Roberts and Nicholas Sparks.

Sparks' "The Notebook," book and film, were both a big deal about 10 years ago. I'm not sure why both of them only came across my personal radar this year, but I watched the movie and then went out and picked up the book.

The Notebook

The story is of a man and a woman who have been in love for most of their lives, and after roughly 50 years together, are nearing the end.

The man is all but crippled by arthritis and heart trouble, but his memory is all there. The woman is in better physical health, but is in an advanced stage of Alzheimer's Disease.

This wasn't always such a big deal, but with all the publicity the disease has received the last 20 years or so, it has become one of the greatest fears of almost everyone at or past retirement age.

It has never been a great fear of mine. It doesn't run in my family. Nearly everyone has lived into their 80s or 90s, and other than some memory problems for my grandfather, no one has come close to Alzheimer's. I'll be 65 in December and I'm fairly confident something else will kill me before Alzheimer's.

My wife has been more concerned about it. For one thing, she has a much better mind than I do. When she used to do some of her work at home, I would look at discarded legal pads and see the most complex equations imaginable. I was always pretty good at math, but I didn't even know what all the symbols represented.

Nicole

I've never had to apologize for my intelligence, but if you were to compare intellect to a cross-country race leaving from New York, my vehicle would run out of gas somewhere on the plains of Kansas while hers would cruise into Los Angeles with petrol to spare.

So she has far more to lose than I do. I could sit in a chair and watch "Rocky & Bullwinkle" reruns for hours at a time and not squirm once. Most of the television my wife watches consists of DVDs of the Great Courses. For her, learning really is a lifelong thing.

But it was just 16 years ago that her own father was dying of Alzheimer's. She sat with him in his room in a Toulouse, France, hospice and read to him for hours. He may or may not have known his youngest daughter, but what she did for him made him happy. And when she kissed him on the cheek, he smiled and said, "Encore! Encore!"

But the family connection concerns us, although we have faith that the worst won't happen. She is the love of my life -- at least the most recent third of it -- and I will be with her as long as we are both alive. And when and if the good times end, I will remember them as long as I remember my own name.