Sandra Day O'Connor's death occasioned a great many articles about her work on the Supreme Court, but a guest essay published this week celebrated a very different — though perhaps equally pathbreaking — legacy: the justice's candor about her husband's Alzheimer's disease. Justice O'Connor was open about having to take her husband, John Jay O'Connor III, to work with her, about later having to retire to care for him, about eventually deciding to move him to a supportive facility. Most striking, she allowed the public to know that while there, he had fallen in love with a fellow resident and that the couple had her blessing. Patti Davis is an expert on Alzheimer's, having published a book about the disease and led a support group for years, but she wrote this essay from the heart — and from her experience of seeing Alzheimer's erode her father, Ronald Reagan. The presence of a Secret Service detail and the family's ability to afford home care meant he was able to spend his final years in his home. That was a comfort to his wife, Nancy, but still, it was isolating. "She didn't talk a lot about her emotions," Davis told me, but "the one thing she did divulge at one point to me was the loneliness of it." As the disease progressed, the former president became less verbal. "They would have dinner together at the dining room table, but where they once obviously had conversations, talked about what happened during their days, it was silent," Davis continued. In later years, when he was confined to his bed, Nancy Reagan "would eat dinner in his room with him, but other than the nurse being there, that was pretty silent, too." To compensate, Davis said, her mother "used to have the television on all the time. She said to me at some point that gave her some life in the house — that there was sound and people talking." Davis told me cases like John O'Connor's are common — far more common than you'd think, given how rarely they are discussed. "I'm sure that Sandra Day O'Connor went through an adjustment period," Davis conjectured. "She had to have. But ultimately, if you want to have any peace of mind, you have to say: It's not my fault that he doesn't remember me. It's what the disease does, and he's happy, and ultimately that's what you settle into." Over the past year, Davis has written with great compassion about the private vulnerabilities of several public figures, including Matthew Perry, Dianne Feinstein and Bruce Willis. She told me she hopes that reading about the O'Connor family will give other families dealing with Alzheimer's disease the courage to navigate their own complicated situations.
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Thursday, December 7, 2023
Opinion Today: Sandra Day O’Connor’s marriage was boundary-breaking, too
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