Four Joy

Some say that everything happens for a reason; there are no chance encounters. Others state that everything happens in threes; there are good, bad and ugly events. My third year traveling through the mists of my husband's Alzheimer's disease tested this hypothesis. I went from a wife and mother to the conniving Captain's daughter and ended up as 'That Other Woman.' Confusion reigned, then and now.


Four Joy is my journal of sorrow. A sorrow that sparked in the war-torn Delta of South Vietnam, and culminated on the battlefield of Alzheimer's in the Florida Panhandle. Four Joy is my journal of love. It didn't begin that way; at least not for me. Herman was an ex-marine and I was an ex--nun. We were oil and water; complete opposites in almost everything. Love was slow to spark between us. Four Joy is my journal of shared oneness. Our daily struggles to make sense of Alzheimer's were arduous. I entered my husband's world and never looked back. We both knew how the story would end; we lived each day as if it would be our last together. We had a blast! We fell in love all over again. Faith and love sustained us throughout our journey.