Families dealing with Alzheimer's often miss their loved
ones' jokes, their loving touch, their knowing smile. Joann
Laue misses her brother, Art, telling her what's wrong with
her garage door opener.
"That was one of the saddest things for me to accept,"
said Laue, whose brother, Art Janousek, has been on Third
Phillips for three years. "I couldn't say, 'Art, fix
this for me.' The hardest thing to accept is he doesn't
come and look at things anymore."
To hear Laue tell it, Janousek's life before Alzheimer's
was about a lot more than fixing things. The son of a filling
station owner in South Dakota and Minnesota, Art was a slight
man who joined the Navy in 1945 or '46 and left a year later
because the style of living didn't agree with him.
Art was the type of man who "marched to his own drummer,"
Laue said. If he didn't have a tool for a particular job,
he'd invent it. He taught himself to play the harmonica,
was known for his pool and his jokes for a good part of
his life and was a man who "never knew a stranger."
"He was the kind of guy who would do things you wouldn't
think of," she said. "He was always very special.
You could tell just by being with him." Another thing
that amazed Laue about her brother was his determination.
One day, she said, he got it in his head to start lifting
weights. At his physical peak, she said, he was a "mountain
man," a hulk who always had a smile for the ladies
and a warm hug for his sister.
"It was a shock to see his body deteriorate,"
she said. "To look at him now, you'd never think he
had a strong body. Well, he was the puny one, and through
sheer determination, he was all muscles. He still has strong
hands. When we walk down the hall, I still have to pry his
hand away."
Laue also remembers her brother undertaking strange and
unusual quests, often in the name of a laugh. He was a prankster,
a jokester, and when his sense of humor waned, that was
one of the first signs that something was wrong. The disease
slowly made him more irritable, she said, until now she
has had trouble feeding her brother kiwi fruit, which used
to be his favorite.
As for family, Art was married twice and had to go through
the trauma of losing a child. He is estranged from his other
son, Laue said. She oversaw much of his care decisions early
on and continues to make those decisions. Laue cares for
Art without hesitation because, the times in her life when
she needed her brother, he was always there.
"One thing I know: If the tables were turned, he would
take care of me until his last breath," she said.
Families dealing with Alzheimer's often miss their loved ones' jokes, their loving touch, their knowing smile. Joann Laue misses her brother, Art, telling her what's wrong with her garage door opener... Read more...
Some people saw a mountain man when they looked at Arthur
Janousek. Joann Laue saw her brother, a man who could fix anything,
who was never shy to give his sister a hug. Now both are dealing
with his Alzheimer's disease.