In hindsight, L.H. Wilson said the signs of his wife’s dementia were there. But when Imogene Wilson did not recognize their longtime friends during a trip to the beach, he knew without a doubt there was a problem.
Now L.H. Wilson, 81, a member of First Baptist Church, Montgomery, in Montgomery Baptist Association, faces decisions he never expected to make. Recently he had to make the difficult choice to put his wife in Waterford Place, a specialty-care assisted-living facility near their home. Despite her illness, in a sense, Imogene Wilson, 76, actually helped make the decision.
“I wanted to keep her at home and stay with her as long as I could,” he said. “But we discovered that her best times were when she was with other people. I realized that if I am depriving her of the final joy she has, then I am doing wrong.”
Now L.H. Wilson spends his days with his wife in a suite decorated with some of her favorite things: a quilt her sister made, chairs from home and keepsakes that include some of his woodcarvings.
In the past, when bedtime came, Imogene Wilson would ask him to help her find her husband. Since she has been at Waterford, she has recognized him almost every day. Her remembering makes him happy but wistful as well. Sometimes he thinks about taking her back home. Then he remembers how difficult it was for her to face the fear she felt being in their quiet home.
“She would get physically violent. She did not know me and was looking for her husband or her parents. Sometimes she would lash out and hit me with whatever she had,” L.H. Wilson said. “That was so different from her normal personality.
“In this place, she is sweet and gentle,” he said. “What I hoped for has happened.”
Rick Ellison, 57, understands the struggles of caring for a spouse. Ellison, an associate in the Sunday School office of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions and a member of First, Montgomery, is the primary caregiver for his wife, Sheila, 61. For the past year, he has slept on the couch next to her specially designed recliner to be near her at night.
It may not be ideal, but it is a special time they share.
“It’s our time to talk about things, to share our hearts and what’s going on,” Ellison said. “It is also a time for me to test how she’s doing.”
Sheila Ellison is no stranger to caregiving or long-term illness. Her father died of polycystic renal disease in 1976, five years after she was diagnosed with the same illness. By 1992, her kidneys were losing function and a future of dialysis was looming. So in 1993, her husband successfully donated a kidney to her in what was then a rare spousal kidney transplant.
“The transplant is a blessing, but the medicine afterward has side effects that can affect other parts of your body,” Rick Ellison said.
Over the past few years, Sheila Ellison has dealt with a host of health problems, including congestive heart failure, a heart attack, blood clots and Addison’s disease, a rare condition caused by failure of the adrenal glands. A subsequent car wreck and fall have caused injuries. Though she can stand briefly, she cannot walk and must use a mobility chair.
The couple spent this past Christmas in the hospital, and when they got home, she decided their prayers from now on should not be for healing but instead for God’s will to be done.
More than anything else, Rick Ellison said he wants to make sure his wife has the best quality of life possible. They both know, however, that health or wellness — life or death — resides in God’s hands.
“We have a peace about it, which is where we are right now,” Rick Ellison said. “If God chooses to heal her, we would rejoice in that. But God has a purpose and we trust Him whatever happens.”
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