Sir Patrick Stewart: How Lucky He Was In the End
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still
~ Walt Whitman
When I saw the news that Sir Patrick Stewart had died I gasped aloud in surprise and then I thought how grateful I am to have lived in the same timeline as he did.
I googled what killed him: “a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s Disease and Lewy Body Dementia” (bbc).
How lucky, I thought then, that his journey with such horrific diseases was brief.
You see, when I was in my mid-20s I worked briefly in an Alzheimer’s care facility. Caring for those residents so lost to themselves – especially a few moments of raw and rare clarity when one of them would look around, realize where they were, remember what wasn’t happening to them and such grief would wash over them, so powerfully they would get lost again right away, almost as if to protect themselves from their own reality.
My favorite was a woman named Katherine, she was so feisty and also so sweet, depending on her mood mostly. But, also, depending on how you approached her. When I first started there I was warned by a co-worker to “watch out for Katherine. She’s a mean one. She’ll throw things at you.”
But, you know what?
Katherine only threw one hair brush at me just that first morning I walked into her room to help her get ready for breakfast. I made a point the next and all the rest of her mornings to enter her space softly, gently, and to greet her with a soft “Good morning, Katherine. I’m Kate and I’m here to help you get ready for breakfast. How are you today.” – because Katherine wasn’t some sort of ogre, she was simply and sadly a vulnerable old woman who woke up every fucking morning confused about where she was and who the hell we were.
I would probably have thrown a hairbrush once or twice myself.
That job changed me forever.
So, when I think back to those residents, I think Sir Patrick was lucky that his encounter with Alzheimer’s Disease and Lewy Body Dementia was brief.
And I remember Robin Williams and how he died believing he had Parkinson’s but whose autopsy later showed had “one of the most severe LBD cases pathologists had seen.”(LBDRC).
Losing your mind to dementia and LBD is absolutely tragic and terrifying, I’m grateful Sir Patric didn’t have to suffer long with it. He got lucky with that.
And also, I know I wouldn’t have had that thought so gently and quickly enter my consciousness before my uterine leiomyosarcoma diagnosis 24 months ago.
Luck and I have developed a new relationship with each other since I got that call from my surgeon with the pathology news. Luck comes in many forms.
So, yeah, I’m stoked I got to be alive during the same timeline as Sir Patric Stewart AND I’m grateful he didn’t have to suffer long AND I’ll miss sharing a planet with him.
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Full poem:
O Captain! My Captain!
By Walt Whitman
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
