It was an ordinary day. Reading a story about a fellow by the name of Robert Wyble who taught school for many years and loved to travel with his wife Naomi. His wife, Naomi, was a tour manager for a local travel service for many years. Her job was to travel to different locations and scout hotels, bus lines and guides, making an itinerary in hopes of selling packaged tours to customers where she worked. Robert never kept a written journal of their travels, instead he took photographs of their travels, mostly in black and white. And then, one day his wife was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. He said, "Learning that Naomi had Alzheimer's disease was like an earthquake that registered 8.5 on the Richter scale." It was at this point in his life that he began to write a memoir about caring for a spouse with Alzheimer's. His memoir is titled "Life Together: Reflections on Faith, Love and Caring for a Spouse with Alzheimer's."
In his memoir he writes that "Our world took a sudden jolt, and shifted forever. Our dream of a long retirement together suddenly took a turn we had not anticipated." It was in 2020 that Naomi's health began to decline and his memoirs became more urgent. He began to reminisce about their travels together when he would document their trips with black and white photographs. His first memory of his wife's condition was during a trip together to southern France in 2015. At the time they had both been retired for about 10 years. She had fading memories and trouble recognizing her surroundings. Instead of retreating into seclusion, they decided to keep traveling and enjoying their retirement as much as possible. He decided they weren't going to stop living.
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| A photograph of Robert and his wife Naomi |
But then Naomi was diagnosed with lung cancer. She died on November 20, 2020. They had been married for 57 years. He writes in his memoir that he wan't overcome with emotion, because he had lost her a long time ago. She had lost her ability to talk with him at the beginning of the summer and mostly told her that they had lived a wonderful life together. He says that it was time for him to release her and let her go. Robert's memoir talks of his faith journey when he volunteered at an Atlanta hospital as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. He also tells of his 34 years in public education. His book portrays a man who never stops questioning, reconsidering and learning. His attitude is reflected in his caring for his wife as she fell deeper into the fog of Alzheimer's. He found he couldn't reason with her so he tried to get into her world and talk about what was real to her. At times he hired outside help so he could still live his own life. Today, he is learning how to live alone. He relies on his family to help him through the tough times. He also is revisiting his Mennonite faith as he tries to gain new views on God and the Bible. He has found the quote "We are in God as fish are in water" and has embraced it. His says that his faith has undergone a sort of evolutionary change in that the concept of God isn't something set in stone, it's something that must be explored and redefined. He now feels he has matured into a kind of harmony with his faith in terms of understanding that God is not somebody that fixes things but somebody that's a source of love. As we age, we all find new ways to live our lives as it become necessary. God too finds a way to help us. We just have to trust in him. If you care to read Robert Wyble's book "Life Together: Reflections on Faith, Love and Caring for a Spouse with Alzheimer's", you can purchase it on Amazon.com. I'm sure you will enjoy his story. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
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