Assignment 5.1

In My Father’s Brain: What Alzheimer’s Takes Away, Jonathan Franzen talks about the true story of his family, and how they dealt with his father’s Alzheimer’s. Jonathan Franzen also gives background information as to what Alzheimer’s is. He then includes more about his family, which is necessary to see how it affects everyone before and after learning of his father’s illness.
First I want to explain a little bit about Alzheimer’s, including the effects on the patient along with those caring for the patient. “…countless sticky-looking globs of “plaque,” and countless neurons engulfed by “tangles” of neuronal fibrils,” (Composition Reader, 90). That’s what the brain looks like after you’ve had Alzheimer’s for many years and have died. “…he leaves the water running, the stove on at times, lights on everywhere, etc…,” (Composition Reader, 86). Basically the Alzheimer’s patient can’t remember, thus small little things like turning off the water are forgotten. Also in My Father’s Brain: What Alzheimer’s Takes Away, it states that you basically lose your abilities’ in reverse that you once learned them many years ago. Then toward the end it is said that you have a “one year-old brain,” because that’s it that you can do. “…sufferers often suffer less and less as it progresses. Caring for an Alzheimer’s patient is gruelingly repetitious precisely because the patient himself has lost the cerebral equipment to experience anything as repetition. …Now. If your short-term memory is shot, you don’t remember, as you stoop to smell a rose, that you’ve been stooping to smell that same rose all morning,” (Composition Reader, 90). So as the person caring for the one with Alzheimer’s, you have to constantly look after them, and then remember everything that they forget like turning the water off. “…they increasingly derange the lives of family members charged with caring for them,” (Composition Reader, 90). It seems as though it is a constant chore for one to care for another with Alzheimer, but for the person who has Alzheimer’s, it could be nice to smell that rose all morning. I sure wish that I could spend a day smelling beautiful flowers.
Franzen’s parents didn’t have a great relationship before his father gets sick. “My parents’ marriage was, it’s safe to say, less than happy,” (Composition Reader, 85). Franzen also says that his parents only stayed together for the sake of their children. While his father worked things weren’t as bad, but after he retired they put in place a “No Exit” policy. Then Franzen says, “I arrived for brief visits like a U.N. peacekeeping force to which each side passionately presented its case against the other,” (Composition Reader, 85). There you can see Franzen’s parent’s miserable relationship.
However after Franzen’s father turned ill, his mother was only able to complain of dad’s flaws, mistakes, and forgetfulness. She wrote Jonathan Franzen letters’, in one of those letters she wrote, “ Either he’s stressed or not concentrating or having some mental deterioration but there have been quite a few incidents recently that really worry me. He keeps leaving the car door open or the lights on & twice in one week we had to call triple A & have them come out & charge the battery (now I’ve posted signs in the garage & that seems to have helped)…,” (Composition Reader, 86). Through her complaints to Jonathan Franzen you can tell that she’s worried about him, and is wondering why these little things are forgotten. Another instance of Jonathan’s mother caring for his father was when she was about to get knee surgery. She wasn’t going to get it done unless someone was with his father at all times. “My mother’s fear of leaving him alone assumed greater urgency as the year dragged on,” (Composition Reader, 86). “…so I offered to stay with my father while my mother had her operation. To steer clear of his pride, she and I agreed to pretend that I was coming for her sake, not his,” (Composition Reader, 87). So I believe that his mother truly cared for his father, or she probably wouldn’t have made sure he was taken care while she had her surgery.
As far as Jonathan Franzen’s relationships with both of his parents go, I don’t believe he was actually around very much. He seemed to come when dad was ill or just every once in a while to say hi, how’s it going? Franzen was a dedicated writer with a wife of his own to care for. And if I were him I wouldn’t want to come into the parent’s miserable life. It seemed easiest just to stay away. However, he was there when he was needed. He was there for when father was in the nursing home and in the hospital. For that, it gave his father hope.
Jonathan Franzen’s father had a huge will to live. “He held himself together longer, I suspect, than it might have seemed he had the neuronal wherewithal to do,” (Composition Reader, 95). He kept fighting to live, especially when his family was around. His father seemed to be a strong man, and didn’t want to be seen with any weaknesses. Therefore, when he was on his deathbed and Jonathan Franzen came to visit, “His blood pressure was seventy over palpable when I flew into town…There’s no way to know if he recognized my voice, but within minutes of my arrival his blood pressure climbed to 120/90. I worried then, worry even now, that I made things harder for him by arriving: that he’d reached the point of being ready to die but was ashamed to perform such a private or disappointing act in front of one of his sons,” (Composition Reader, 97). Eventually Franzen’s father died, “…my mother and I were conferring with a nurse in the doorway of his room, not long after the lights came back on, when I noticed that he was drawing his hands up toward his throat….And then nothing,” (Composition Reader, 98).
“…in the slow-motion way of Alzheimer’s, my father wasn’t much deader now than he’s been two hours or two weeks or two months ago. We’d simply lost the last of the parts out of which we could fashion a living whole. There would be no new memories of him. The only stories we could tell now were the ones we already had,” (Composition Reader, 98). This quote shows Jonathan Franzen’s love for his father. Franzen hated seeing his father suffering that much. Alzheimer’s took everything of his father. His father was helpless, and it was said that he had the brain of a one year-old. What kind of life is that? Who wants to live as they once did when they were one? People constantly watching over you to make sure you’re safe and sound. Also helping to feed you, “At the dinner table, my mother spread a bath towel over him and cut his turkey into little bits,” (Composition Reader, 94).