It has been a decade since that day in Florida when Muriel, my wife, repeated to the couple vacationing with us the story she had told just five minutes earlier. Funny, I thought, that’s never happened before. But it began to happen occasionally.
Three years later, when Muriel was hospitalized for tests on her heart, a young doctor called me aside: “You may need to think about the possibility of Alzheimer’s.” I was incredulous. Young doctors are so presumptuous-and insensitive.
Muriel, for the most part, was doing the same things she had always done. True, we had stopped entertaining in our home-no small loss for the president of a seminary and Bible college. She was a great cook and hostess, but she was having increased difficulty planning menus. Family meals she could handle, but with guests we could not risk missing a salad and dessert.
And, yes, she was having uncommon difficulty painting a portrait of me, which the college and seminary board, impressed by her earlier splendid portrait of my predecessor, had requested.
But Alzheimer’s? A dread began to lurk around the fringes of my consciousness.
We eventually went to Joe Tabor, a neurologist friend, who gave her the full battery of tests and, by elimination, confirmed that she had Alzheimer’s. But because she had none of the typical physical deterioration, there was some question. We went to the Duke University Medical Center, believing we should get the best available second opinion. My heart sank as the doctor asked her to name the Gospels and she looked pleadingly at me for help. But she quickly bounced back and laughed at herself. She was a little nervous, perhaps, but nothing was going to get her down.
This time we accepted the verdict. And we determined from the outset not to chase around the country every new “miracle” treatment we might hear about. Little did I know the day was coming when we would be urged-on average, once a week-to pursue every variety of treatment: vitamins, exorcism, chemicals, this guru, that healer.
How could I even look into them all, let alone pursue them? I was grateful to friends who made suggestions, because each was an expression of love. But for us, we would trust the Lord to work a miracle in Muriel if he so desired, or work a miracle in me if he did not.
One day the WMHK station manager, the program manager, and the producer of my wife’s morning radio program, “Looking Up,” asked for an appointment. I knew an occasional program she had produced was not used, but the response to her monologue of upbeat encouragement continued to be strong. They had talked of national syndication.
At the appointment, the three executives seemed uneasy. After a few false starts, I caught on. They were reluctantly letting me know that an era was ending. I tried to help them out. “Are you telling me that Muriel cannot continue?” They seemed relieved that their painful message was out and none of them had to say it. So, I thought, her public ministry is over. No more conferences, TV, radio.
She did not think so, however. She may have lost the radio program, but she insisted on accepting invitations to speak, even though invariably she would come home crushed and bewildered that her train of thought was lost and things did not go well. Gradually, reluctantly, she gave up public ministry.
Still, she could counsel the many young people who sought her out; she could write her children. The letters did not always make sense, but then, the children would say, “Mom always was a bit spacy.” Reading and writing were going the way of art and public speaking.
Muriel never knew what was happening to her, though occasionally when there was a reference to Alzheimer’s on TV she would muse aloud, “I wonder if I’ll ever have that?” It did not seem painful for her, but it was a slow dying for me to watch the vibrant, creative, articulate person I knew and loved gradually dimming out.
I approached the college board of trustees with the need to begin the search for my successor. I told them that when the day came that Muriel needed me full-time, she would have me. I hoped that would not be necessary until I reached retirement, but at 57 it seemed unlikely I could hold on till 65.
But they intended for me to stay on forever, I guess, and made no move. That’s not realistic, and probably not very responsible, I thought, though I appreciated the affirmation.
So began years of struggle with the question of what should be sacrificed: ministry or caring for Muriel. Should I “seek first” the kingdom of God, “hate” my wife and, for the sake of ministry, arrange for institutionalization? Trusted, lifelong friends-wise and godly-urged me to do so.
“Muriel would become accustomed to the new environment quickly.” Would she? Would anyone love her at all, let alone love her as I do? I had often seen the empty, listless faces of those lined up in wheelchairs along the corridors of such places, waiting, waiting for the fleeting visit of some loved one. In such an environment, Muriel would be tamed only with drugs or bodily restraints, of that I was confident.
People who do not know me well have said, “Well, you always said, ‘God first, family second, ministry third.’ ” But I never said that. To put God first means that all other responsibilities he gives are first, too. Sorting out responsibilities that seem to conflict, however, is tricky business.
In 1988 we planned our first family reunion since the six children had left home, a week in a mountain retreat. Muriel delighted in her children and grandchildren, and they in her. Banqueting with all those gourmet cooks, making a quilt that pictured our life scene by scene, playing games, singing, and picking wild mountain blueberries were marvelous.
We planned it as the celebration of our “fortieth” anniversary, although actually it was the thirty-ninth. We feared that by the fortieth she would no longer know us. But she still knows us-three years later. She cannot comprehend much or express many thoughts, and those not for sure. But she knows whom she loves, and lives in happy oblivion to almost everything else.
She is such a delight to me. I don’t have to care for her, I get to. One blessing is the way she is teaching me so much-about love, for example, God’s love. She picks flowers outside-anyone’s-and fills the house with them.
Lately she has begun to pick them inside, too. Someone had given us a beautiful Easter lily, two stems with four or five lilies on each, and more to come. One day I came into the kitchen and there on the windowsill over the sink was a vase with a stem of lilies in it. I’ve learned to “go with the flow” and not correct irrational behavior. She means no harm and does not understand what should be done, nor would she remember a rebuke.
Nevertheless, I did the irrational-I told her how disappointed I was, how the lilies would soon die, the buds would never bloom, and please do not break off the other stem.
The next day our youngest son, soon to leave for India, came for his next-to-last visit. I told Kent of my rebuke of his mother and how bad I felt about it. As we sat on the porch swing, savoring each moment together, his mother came to the door with a gift of love for me: she carefully laid the other stem of lilies on the table with a gentle smile and turned back into the house. I said simply, “Thank you.”
Kent said, “You’re doing better, Dad!”
Muriel cannot speak in sentences now, only in phrases and words, and often words that make little sense: “no” when she means “yes,” for example. But she can say one sentence, and she says it often: “I love you.”
She not only says it, she acts it. The board arranged for a companion to stay in our home so I could go daily to the office. During those two years it became increasingly difficult to keep Muriel home. As soon as I left, she would take out after me. With me, she was content; without me, she was distressed, sometimes terror stricken.
The walk to school is a mile round trip. She would make that trip as many as ten times a day.
Sometimes at night, when I helped her undress, I found bloody feet. When I told our family doctor, he choked up. “Such love,” he said simply.
Then after a moment, he said, “I have a theory that the characteristics developed across the years come out at times like these.” I wish I loved God like that-desperate to be near him at all times. Thus she teaches me, day by day.
Friends and family often ask, “How are you doing?” meaning, I would take it, “How do you feel?” I am at a loss to respond. There is that subterranean grief that will not go away. I feel just as alone as if I had never known her as she was, I suppose, but the loneliness of the night hours comes because I did know her. Do I grieve for her loss or mine? Further, there is the sorrow that comes from my increasing difficulty in meeting her needs.
But I guess my friends are asking not about her needs, but about mine. Or perhaps they wonder, in contemporary jargon, how I am “coping,” as they reflect on how the alleged indispensable characteristics of a good marriage have slipped away, one by one.
I came across the common contemporary wisdom in a letter to a national newspaper columnist: “I ended the relationship because it wasn’t meeting my needs.” The counselor’s response was predictable: “Do you still have these same needs? What would he have to do to fill these needs? Could he do it?” Needs for communication, understanding, affirmation, common interests, sexual fulfillment-the list goes on. If the needs are not met . . .
He offered no alternatives. I reflected on the eerie irrelevance of every one of those criteria for me.
I have long lists of “coping strategies,” which have to be changed weekly, sometimes daily. Grocery shopping together may have been recreation, but it is not so much fun when Muriel begins to load other people’s carts and take off with them, disappearing into the labyrinth of supermarket aisles. Or how do you get a person to eat or take a bath when she steadfastly refuses?
It is not like meeting a $10 million budget or designing a program to grasp some emerging global opportunity. It is not as public or exhilarating. But it demands greater resources, creativity, and flexibility than I could have imagined. I feel an occasional surge of exhilaration as I find my present assignment more challenging than running an institution’s complex ministry. It highlights more clearly than ever my own inadequacies, as well as provides constant opportunity to draw on our Lord’s vast reservoir of resources.
As she needed more and more of me, I wrestled daily with the question of who gets me full-time-Muriel or Columbia Bible College and Seminary? Dr. Tabor advised me not to make any decision based on my desire to see Muriel stay contented: “Make your plans apart from that question. Whether or not you can be successful in your dreams for the college and seminary I cannot judge, but I can tell you now, you will not be successful with Muriel.”
When the time came, the decision was firm. It took no great calculation. It was a matter of integrity. Had I not promised, forty-two years before, “in sickness and in health . . . till death do us part”?
This was no grim duty to which I stoically resigned, however. It was only fair. She had, after all, cared for me for almost four decades with marvelous devotion; now it was my turn. And such a partner she was! If I took care of her for forty years, I would never be out of her debt.
But how could I walk away from a ministry God had so blessed during our twenty-two years at Columbia Bible College and Seminary? Not easily. So many dreams were yet on the drawing board. And the peerless team God had brought together-not just professionals but dear friends-how could I bear to leave them?
But whatever Columbia needed, it did not need a part-time, distracted leader. It was better to move out and let God designate a leader to step in while the momentum was continuing. It seemed clearly in the best interest of the ministry for me to step down, even if board and administrators thought otherwise. Both loves-for Muriel and for Columbia Bible College and Seminary-dictated the same choice.
I have been startled by the response to the announcement of my resignation. Husbands and wives renew marriage vows, pastors tell the story to their congregations. It was a mystery to me, until a distinguished oncologist, who lives constantly with dying people, told me, “Almost all women stand by their men; very few men stand by their women.”
It is more than keeping promises and being fair, however. As I watch her brave descent into oblivion, Muriel is the joy of my life. Daily I discern new manifestations of the kind of person she is, the wife I always loved. I also see fresh manifestations of God’s love-the God I long to love more fully.
Robertson McQuilkin recently resigned as president of Columbia Bible College and Seminary, Columbia, South Carolina, after which he was named chancellor, a position that draws on his expertise while still allowing him to care for his wife.
Copyright © 1991 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
