The bride and groom stood solemnly and surrounded by family members with sparkling eyes. In the space between the blessing of “The Creator of Man” and “Shosh Tashish VeTgal”, a bespectacled figure of a young man peeked between the shoulders of the bride’s parents, shouting with a mischievous look: “Coco”. “Shhh!” The woman next to him whispered to him, “Now the ceremony!”. “It happens to him sometimes,” she apologized, pulling his hand and leading him to a chair in the event garden. At first he looked reprimanded, then his gaze was blank. In line for the buffet one of the guests whispered: Poor thing, such a young man, maybe 40, has Alzheimer’s. What will become of him.
I can recognize the hollow look from the days when I would come to the house of a beloved and heroic man. We had a ceremony: first he would sink into a conversation with me, interested in the well-being of the children, in work, in the topics I write about. Suddenly he would look away from me to the half-ruined building outside the living room window of his house. “Now she will move to the broken window and from there to the roof. Two of her friends will come. Every day at three o’clock the same thing. The same thing. Do you hear that? The dove hums. She calls her friends.” He had a beautiful Moroccan accent wrapped in the language of a studio. the cooing of the pigeon.
At first they said: This is age. Happens. The disease then accumulated desires of its own and was gradually erased, until there was no choice but to transfer him to a nursing home with a ward that provided close supervision around the clock. Every now and then the heroic man would wake up to reality, humming “My Golani is a war of liberation, my Golani is the same story” and ask in panic where his beret is, the one he has devoutly kept in his wardrobe all these years. Other times he would complain, “What is this? Why did you bring me to a place with so many elders?”.
My grandfather in the Alzheimer’s version.
This lousy disease was first mentioned in 1907 in an article by a German physician named Alois Alzheimer, who described symptoms such as impaired intellectual ability, memory, concentration and attention disorders. These came alongside disorientation in time and environment, speech disorders and difficulty finding words, behavioral disorders like overactivity, aggression, loss of judgment and more. “Retrogenesis”. This is the term that comes to describe how Alzheimer’s peels the cognitive abilities in a process opposite to that of a child acquiring them. How do the experts say? There is no learning curve and what is forgotten does not return.
According to EU data, one in 20 Alzheimer’s patients and patients in Israel is between the ages of 30 and 65, and the number is only growing. The Amda website, set up by families of Alzheimer’s patients, states that existing health services are not suitable for young patients, so they are left unanswered.
Due to the young age and atypical features of the disease, doctors do not suspect that it is a brain disease or dementia, which leads to underdiagnosis and an increase in referral to expensive and unnecessary diagnostic services. When it comes to the elderly, there is a tendency to put up with it, but I hear about more and more young people around me who have Alzheimer’s.
By the time the diagnosis arrives, it is too late. In young people, who are still in the family years of growth and in the midst of a work career, the signs are different than in adults: in a third of cases the initial complaint can be vision problems, speech disorders, personality changes, slowness and instability, sleep disorders and seizures. Then come the rest of the symptoms and with them a neurological return to the state of childhood. Eternal instantaneous.
Under the strong impression of meeting the young and disturbed young man at the wedding, I received the eighth volume of “Reading the Generations”, the excellent book series by the researcher of Hebrew literature for generations, Prof. Nurit Govrin. At the base of the series is a reading of the literature of the generations, in the field of poetry and fiction, along with responding to the so-called invitation of writers of previous generations to read their works and have a dialogue. The basic concept underlying all research: culture is built tier upon tier.
In the new volume (this time published by Tzavonim) Govrin devotes an entire chapter to the loss of memory in Hebrew literature, as part of a series of studies on literature and medicine. “A Man Deleted,” is the title of the episode. Govrin focuses on ten works: Natan Zach with “The Death of My Mother”, Nurit Gretz with “On His Own – Four Chapters of Amos Keinan’s Life”, Maya Arad with “Suspicion of Dementia”, Amnon Shemush with “Good Morning Elts Heimer”, “The Tunnel” Of A.B. Joshua and more. There was tuberculosis and it is gone. Now it’s Alzheimer’s turn.
All the works point to the increasing presence of Alzheimer’s disease in Hebrew literature with the lengthening of life expectancy and the increase in its prevalence. “While tuberculosis had a romantic image, Alzheimer’s disease is paranoid, petty and thoughtful,” Govrin writes, stating that beautiful Hebrew literature, in fact dealing with the subject of memory loss, creates a genre in itself, with common characteristics that will be reflected in future books. This painful issue. This column is dedicated to 87-year-old Prof. Govrin, who remembers the forgers and those who may be forgotten, and reminds us, the rememberers, to keep an eye open.
The recommendation
June is a child who loves sounds more than anything else, as long as they are not the speech sound of other children. He is not doing well in school, and his dog is afraid of cats. Through sound design, digital surprises, recorded samples and live music, the Klifa Theater offers in the new show for ages 4-7 a journey into a rich world and find out if the sounds will help June solve his affairs. At the end of the show, there will be a workshop to experience playing and creating digital musical instruments.
“Sounds in a Jar,” Shell Theater. Creator and performer: Yoni Tel. 16.7, 11:00 in the Galem Collective Space, Haifa. 30.7, 11:30 at the Kalifa Theater, Tel Aviv. 50 shekels
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