Alzheimer’s can ravage caregivers
Wilder’s widow writes movingly how the disease affected both of them
Gene Wilder’s widow Karen Boyer has written a moving essay about her husband’s battle with Alzheimer’s disease and the toll it takes on caregivers.
Wilder, star of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, The Producers and other movies, died in August 2016 at age 83 after a long battle with the degenerative neurological disease. Boyer, who married Wilder in 1991, a couple of years after his comedian wife Gilda Radner had died, has written a moving essay for ABC News recalling the struggle of looking after an Alzheimer’s sufferer.
After recounting how they met, the first signs that something was wrong and the diagnosis, Boyer wrote, “My husband took the news with grief, of course, but also astonishing grace. I watched his disintegration each moment of each day for six years ... We still managed to have some good times and to laugh, even at the ravages of the disease that was killing him.
“But there’s another particularly cruel aspect to the disease of Alzheimer’s, because in addition to destroying — piece by piece — the one who’s stricken with it, it ravages the life of the person caring for its victims. In our case, I was that person.”
She praised the Alzheimer’s Association for its help and support to caregivers, 40 per cent of whom die before the sufferer due to the emotional and physical toll. Boyer has allowed the association to use footage of Wilder as Willy Wonka for its new campaign, the Pure Imagination Project, a name inspired by one of Wonka’s songs. “Gene died 15 months ago. I was in the bed next to him when he took his last breaths,” she wrote. “By that point, it had been days since he’d spoken. But on that last night, he looked me straight in the eye and said, three times over, ‘I trust you.’
“I am grateful that Gene never forgot who I was,” Boyer wrote. “But many caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients are less fortunate ... It is a strange, sad irony that so often, in the territory of a disease that robs an individual of memory, caregivers are often the forgotten. Without them, those with Alzheimer’s could not get through the day, or die — as my husband did — with dignity, surrounded by love.”