Joan Josephson has a look of joy as she plays a Mozart duet on the piano with her husband, Chuck. Now and again, Joan is briefly out of sync, playing too fast or too slow.
Still, it’s clear that Alzheimer’s has not stolen her musical ability — a talent she shared for 35 years in Tucson as a church pianist, organist and children’s choir director. The disease has taken much, but it is moments like this at the piano that make Chuck determined to help Joan remain in their midtown home.
Joan, who is 83, started showing signs of memory loss in 2005, and by 2010 an MRI revealed the damage to her brain. As the disease progressed, relatives urged Chuck to put her in a care home. Instead, he began to write, as he put it, “to explain what I was really doing: trying not to focus on what she ‘loses’ but on ‘what remains.’”
He eventually turned his writing into a pamphlet, which he gave to relatives and a few friends, and then to the Arizona Daily Star after the newspaper published a section on dementia last fall. Starting today through March 10, the Star will publish the pamphlet in daily installments.
Chuck, who is 82 and the now-retired longtime owner of the Print Well on East Broadway, says his purpose isn’t to instruct anyone. “I am just trying to describe how we are coping.”
He has a dim view of some of the advice he’s received at Alzheimer’s seminars and programs, but he says what one doctor told him early on was invaluable: “You must recognize that she can no longer ‘learn’ anything.”
“The doctor’s advice,” Chuck writes, “prevents me from getting too frustrated when naturally thinking, ‘You used to do this, just do it the way you used to.’”
Joan has always loved people, and Chuck takes her everywhere. She attends an exercise class most weekdays at Mid-Valley Athletic Club. “They all take care of her,” Chuck says.
They also regularly attend Tuesday meetings of the Pima County Republican Club. Both have been active in Republican politics since they moved to Tucson in 1979. They worship at Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church on North Campbell Avenue, and even played a piano duet there last Christmas.
They don’t travel as much as Chuck would like, but he hopes they can soon go to Washington state to see their daughter, granddaughter and grandson and — most of all, it seems — their great-granddaughter Kenlie, who is 1. She is named after their son, Ken, who died in 2013.
Joan always remembers who Chuck is, and often tells people she has just met that he is a “nice man.” She is happy to talk with anyone, but cannot remember names even minutes later. “Who are you?” she asks again and again.
Asked what he misses most, Chuck says he and Joan talk but are unable to have a conversation. Still, “life isn’t as different as you might think,” he says. They play piano and games, and Chuck enjoys cooking. If anyone wants to argue politics with him, Chuck is ready.
In the foreword to his pamphlet, Chuck concludes, “My wish is this. If we have some success as we face head-on this horrible phenomenon, may we come to say, as in the Bible, ‘the yoke is easy and the burden is light.’”
