By Don Nelson
The last time I saw Don Reddington was at the Methow Valley News office. He was, with assistance, making some rounds in town and wanted to say “hi” to me. It was an emotional few minutes. While Don clearly seemed to know who I was (dementia patients can adapt and compensate for the blanks in their memories), he was remembering me from a year earlier, when I had just returned to the Methow from a month in the hospital. He asked after how I was and said he was happy to see me looking better.
It warmed my heart a lot, and broke it a little, to have that conversation. Four-plus years into an Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis, Don was still rallying against the inevitable with all the flagging energy he could summon up. That was in keeping with the indefatigable attitude he adopted early on about coping with, and spreading the word about, this awful disease that slowly, relentless dissolves the essence of a human being before our eyes.
Lately, that energy has manifested itself in manic frustration building to acted-out anger. We can only imagine —and hope never to know — the tumult raging in the brain of this bright, engaging, active, accomplished man who, at some level requiring physical expression when all other means fail him, is aware of what’s happening.
I sat down last week with Don’s wife, Ginger, to talk about the past few months of their lives, which have been chaotic as the disease’s progress accelerated. She wanted people to know what was happening — Don’s devotion to telling his story has become Ginger’s as well — as Don’s condition rapidly plummeted from manageable-at-home to living at Jamie’s Place to now requiring permanent care in a Veterans Administration facility for dementia patients. (See article, page B6.)
As much as they have painfully endured watching their loved one fade away from them, Don’s family has never flinched from the reality of his experience, nor equivocated about its outcome. They know that the narrowing focus of Don’s remaining sentience is on simply going home. And that is probably never going to happen. What’s left of Don Reddington is diminishing to a spectral version of the man. What’s to be done is increasingly limited, what’s to be hoped for is profoundly basic — and loving. As Ginger told me in last week’s interview, “I want him to be safe, and I want him to be as happy as he can be.”
After he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Don decided that he would like to publicly share his story about confronting it. With some editing support, Don wrote a series of compelling, intensely personal articles that appeared in the Methow Valley News. The series was so popular that the articles were eventually combined with other stories and photography in the special magazine, “Living With Alzheimer’s: the Reddington Project,” which was produced by the News in 2016, thanks to community donations that helped cover costs. Thousands of copies of the magazine have been distributed around the country.
I first got to know Don in 2015 when the articles were first appearing in the newspaper. We communicated regularly through 2016 as the magazine came together. While early symptoms of the disease were evident, we were able to have meaningful conversations that left me even more impressed with the efficacy of his constant mantra, “Life is good.”
It was barely more than a year ago that Don and his daughter Donni completed a motorcycle tour around the state to promote Alzheimer’s awareness. The “Ride4Alzheimers” was a mission, an adventure and a celebration of possibilities.
Like many Alzheimer’s victims, Don could have retreated, in despair and embarrassment, from the public eye. Instead, he invited us on an intimate, revealing journey of the human spirit. I hope that, somewhere in his remaining consciousness, Don is aware of how much that selflessness means to those who know and love him, and to the world beyond. When he could have kept it all to himself, Don instead gave us everything he had.
