You Kiss Your Mother With That Mouth?

God is good. Always good. He does not send disease "to teach us lessons." He is not a passive-aggressive God; he is not an abusive Father; he is not a disinterested Friend; he does not abandon us in our time of need. We were created to have fellowship with Him. He is unjustly blamed for bad things that happen to us and others, things that would more fairly be attributed to the enemy of our souls, to the human condition, or to ourselves due to our bad decisions.

But, as far as we know, this disease has nothing to do with bad decisions. To me, there is no greater proof that Alzheimer's is a downright demonic disease than the theft of a person's reasoning ability and the Jekyll/Hyde switch from a really nice person to a verbal (and, I'm sure sometimes, physical) abuser and back in a split second.

Many of you know that my employer was absolutely fabulous in working around our situation, allowing me to work mostly from my virtual office at home for the last year or two of my employment and only expecting me to physically be in the actual office when absolutely necessary. Not only that, but it was no problem with my employer if my husband tagged along on those occasions, even "helping" me with some of my tasks and feeling useful. I'm very appreciative of the love and concern demonstrated to us, and this allowed me to keep on going until it just really wasn't possible any more.

So, about a month or so before I stopped my outside work altogether, my husband was with me at the office as usual. It had been a normal and customary day, but now it was sundowning time. We headed out to the parking lot, got in the car, and started home.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, in the middle of "conversation" (such as it was and is), out came the most flaming torrent of blue language you've ever heard in your life. Vile, foul stuff. Jawdropping, take-you-by-surprise, breathtaking stuff. Now, don't get me wrong. My husband would on occasion -- especially when angry, upset, or irritated -- utter an expletive here and there, like most guys (and a lot of women, too) do under the circumstances. But this was far beyond that.

I seem to have misplaced the note I had this particular diatribe and other indignities written on, thank goodness, so this is written to the best of my memory and sanitized pretty well:  'You (expletive deleted) female dog. You're a horrible (expletive deleted) person, you (expletive deleted) female dog. You're the worst (expletive deleted) person I've ever met. I'm going to (expletive deleted, expletive deleted) knock your (expletive deleted) head off...' Etc. Well, you get the picture. Need I go on?

The barrage of insults and profanities against me and everything associated with me (my looks, my personality, my work, etc.) lasted all the way home. Which, granted, was only about five minutes. Thankfully. And as soon as we pulled in to the driveway, the Jekyll/Hyde switch flipped. It was as if nothing untoward had happened (except for the residual pain in my heart, fury in my belly, and tears streaming down my face).

"We're home?"

"Yes, we are."

And we got out of the car like two perfectly normal people on a beautiful day.

I've read somewhere that people in late-stage Alzheimer's have difficulty with vocabulary and many increasingly use profanity to express themselves when they normally would have resisted this impulse in the past. So, there we are. Or, there we were seven months ago, anyway.