March 2007 (cont.)

The neurologist who finally diagnosed Peter with Lewey Body Dementia said, upon examining the PET scan that showed how thoroughly his brain had been invaded, “He has been much sicker than anyone knew for much longer than anyone knew. Only pure willpower has kept him functioning for so long.”

By that time, Katy and I were watching him shuffle into the bathroom off his hospital room and stand staring at the wall, unable to locate the sink. Or he would stand in front of the refrigerator in the hospital common room—somehow he could always find his way to the common room where ice cream was kept—unable to open the door.

“There are babies in there,” he would say. Once, as I sat beside his bed, he burst into tears and said, “I want my mommy.” I had never felt so helpless.

While we watched and waited, a sweetness I had always known in him, rose through the dementia and the terrors of psychosis the illness brought on. In the nursing home, when he was still mobile, he would go to the nurses’ station and ask to help. They would give him a rag and he would, with great concentration, dust the hand rails up and down the halls.

My brilliant, obstinate little boy!