Dementia can’t separate couple of 64 years
Wife moves into memory-care unit to aid husband.
Most days, Bud St. Clair doesn’t need his wife’s help. Not of the physical sort, anyway.
If he wanders down the wrong hallway or - as the man known as Mr. Fix-It did not long ago - dismantles the dresser in his room just so he could put it right back together, someone else is always close by to lend a hand.
But it’s the “what ifs” that keep Audrey St. Clair right by his side.
What if ... Bud needs help with his food at dinner?
What if ... he can’t get his shirt buttoned properly?
What if ... he can’t recall the word his mind is frantically searching for as he shares an old war story?
No, after 64 years of marriage, there’ll be no “what ifs” as long as Audrey has a say.
So that’s why, when rapidly increasing dementia led his family in July to move 89-year-old Bud into the memory-care wing of the Senior Star Dublin Retirement Village, Audrey moved with him, even though she didn’t need the same level of assistance.
“I never had to want for anything. I had never had to wonder even one day if I was loved. He’s always been there for me, now I’m here for him,” the 84-year-old said as she glanced at her husband and smiled. “I married for life.” The couple grew up on the same street in Zanesville in Muskingum County and first met in 1953 when Bud offered to regularly drive several girls to school in his Chevy convertible. Audrey was among them.
“Pretty soon there was a first date,” Audrey said with a laugh, pointing out that it was a big deal because her husband is five years older.
The couple drove to a Columbus theater to watch the movie “Moulin Rouge.” She declared the evening a roaring success.
“I went home and told my grandma that I was going to marry that man,” Audrey recalled.
Was Bud head over heels right away, too?
“I don’t know. I think I was. Yeah, I’m pretty certain I was,” he said, seemingly teasing his wife.
But the Korean War erupted, and off Bud went with the Army.
He returned to Zanesville two years later and, on Dec. 16, 1955, they married in an intimate ceremony at a small local church.
Their life, Audrey said, has been a blessed one. The couple had no children but have plenty of nieces and nephews who are like their own.
“They really were second parents to us all,” said niece Johnna Hildebrand, who lives with her family on a Madison County farm and helps care for the St. Clairs.
“They’ve just been together forever and are such an important part of everyone’s lives.”
Bud worked more than 40 years as an engineer with Armco Steel; Audrey worked at several jewelry stores and spent a decade with the local savings and loan.
Their lifestyle, however, was the car-show circuit. Bud owned three Corvettes (he had a Corvette pattern on his shirt Tuesday), his most recent a prized red 1960 model that they finally sold just last year.
In halting sentences, Bud recalled the joy he found in tearing the Corvette apart piece by piece and putting it back together again. Tinkering with it, he said, always kept him sane.
Audrey shared that the garage was his palace, and that she was never allowed to hang a clothesline in there despite asking for years. And then one day she came home to find a clothesline strung up.
But instead of their sheets and pants drying in the air, freshly painted car parts hung from it instead.
“That was life,” she said, laughing.
Then she teared up. “That car was such a huge part of our life. We miss it so much.”
As she spoke, Bud fidgeted. He rose from the table in the common area of the retirement village where they’d been sitting and checked his watch. He headed toward the window.
“Honey, what are you doing?” Audrey asked him.
He mumbled, then checked his watch again. “Bud. What is it?” “The car,” he tells her. “The car will be driving by. I want to see it.”
“Honey. There is no car,” she said gently. “Sit down.”
It was a couple of years ago when Bud first started showing signs of dementia. He would forget things, misplace items. Sometimes, the sentences he started went nowhere.
With a family history, both he and Audrey knew what was ahead.
“I couldn’t look the other way,” Audrey said. “It was just there and we had to deal with it,” she said.
The nieces and nephews quickly took matters in hand, getting Bud to a dementia facility in Zanesville and Audrey into assisted living. That didn’t work out. So in July, Audrey said, she demanded that they find space for them together.
Bud’s room is in the north hallway; Audrey’s is in the south. She still gets out and about on special bus trips, and she said she takes comfort knowing Bud is cared for when she’s gone. She has a television in her room (he doesn’t because he would most likely tear it apart as a project), so they generally watch some shows together in her room in the evening before turning in separately.
Senior Star administrator Dionne Nicol said that when the couple’s niece came to talk about options, it was clear there was no other way than to move Audrey in, too.
“Theirs is a love story for the ages,” she said. “We want to do what’s best for our families, and what’s best for Bud and Audrey is for Bud and Audrey to be together.”
Bud said his wife has “kinda taken over the place,” helping other residents as much as she can. She knows just how everyone in the dining room likes their coffee and she sees that they get it. The kitchen help, she said, seems overworked, so she just steps in.
Audrey said the key to their long and happy marriage is simple: “Be truthful to each other in all ways. Love. Trust. He gave me the best life I could have imagined.”
Bud said all that doesn’t mean there weren’t lousy days. There were. “But you get through them,” he said.
Asked about the roughest times they’ve ever endured, he said, “We’re going through them now.”
Audrey patted his hand and they took a moment.
“But we still love each other,” she said after a pause. She smiled at her husband. “Don’t we?”
He nodded.
And together, they laughed.