Goodbye Paula

I got a phone call this week I'd been expected for a long time. My friend Paula passed away.

I've written about her twice on this blog, both times about my visits with her at the Alzheimer's facility where she was during her final years (those posts are here and here).

My friends Alison and Michael both called to tell me she'd died. It's funny how sometimes when you see the name on the caller ID you know exactly what the call is going to be.

Timing is everything. In the last couple of weeks, I'd been telling my wife I really needed to go visit Paula. I knew it had been a while, but until I saw the date on those last posts I wrote about her, I didn't realize exactly how long. I'm sorry to say I never made it back to see her.

I wrote in more detail in those other posts about her, so I won't go into too much length about her here. Suffice it to say she was an extraordinary person, one of the best account people I'll ever work with, an unrelenting encourager and a great, great friend.

Sadly I don't have a picture of Paula, but what I do have is every great memory of her in my heart. Having seen her in her advanced stages of Alzheimer's, I can honestly say I'm happy she's been set free, fully restored and at long last reunited with her husband.

I love you Paula. Thank you for being the friend you were. Rest in peace.

Visiting Paula again

It's been a little over a year since I posted about visiting my friend Paula who has Alzheimer's. Judging by the comments I received both here and on Facebook, it was a post that seemed to strike a chord with a lot of readers.

Ever since that visit I've been meaning to go back. I've thought of her often, looked for a time and day and tried to organize my schedule around a trip to that part of L.A. so I could do it. I suppose had I wanted to badly enough I would've found a way.

But the truth is that, in equal parts, I wanted to and I didn't want to.

My visit with her last September was so unsettling, I didn't know how I would bear up doing it again - even though afterwards I was extremely glad I'd been there (and, ignoring all evidence to the contrary, hoping on some level, somewhere in her failing mind, she was too).

I went to see Paula for the second time yesterday. And I have pastrami and my longtime friend Ned to thank for it.

Ned and I have been trying to get together for awhile, and we finally did yesterday. Ned suggested we meet at Langer's Deli on 7th and Alvarado right across from MacArthur Park. Langer's is "home of the world's best pastrami sandwich", and for years Ned has told me how great it is. Come to find out he wasn't kidding. I imagine it's what pastrami in heaven must taste like.

Because Langer's is about a five minute drive from the facility where Paula lives, it was the perfect time to pay her a second visit.

Walking into the place brought back a rush of memories from the first visit. The pale blue hallway walls, the locked doors of the Alzheimer's wing, the vacant eyes of the patients staring at me from the doorways of their rooms. Some smiling at me. Some screaming.

The first time I was there, Paula was walking down the hallway on her own. This time, I had to speak with the head nurse, tell her who I was there to see, and then she had another nurse walk Paula out to me.

When I saw her, it was startling for a few reasons. Despite the fact it's only been about a year, Paula seemed much more fragile than the first time. Her hair, which on the first visit had been somewhat close to the way she used to wear it when we worked together, except a little grayer, was now long, stringy and not entirely clean looking. Where before she walked fairly normally, in fact even rapidly, she now moved in slow, shuffling steps on the linoleum floor.

When she saw me, she smiled and said, "How are ya?" The disarming thing about it was I could tell it had no connection to seeing me or greeting anyone. They were just words that didn't register any meaning for her as she spoke them. In the same way longtime coma patients will suddenly open their eyes or blink rapidly, Paula asking the question was a reflex from a life and mind long gone.

As before, I took her hand and we walked in circles around the ward. The only way I can explain the conversation Paula was having with herself, even though occasionally looking at me, is that she seemed to have more strength in her dementia. Her words were clear and articulate. She'd ask a question and wait for an answer. Then follow up with a comment that had no relation to either.

There's a wooden handrail that runs on the walls between each of the rooms. As we walked, occasionally Paula would stop, turn to the handrail, and not lean on it but hold it and talk to it for awhile as if it was the one thing in the place that could really understand her.

Then we'd move on.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating: the people working at her facility are angels on earth. I can't imagine coming to work everyday knowing nothing will get better. In fact knowing it will eventually go the other way. But day in and day out, that's what these caregivers do. And while in real life it's not as neat or sensitive as it's sometimes portrayed in the movies, it is remarkable to see the affection and attachment they have to their patients.

At one point in our stroll, we met up with the activity director at the facility. We spoke for a bit about the person Paula used to be, and maybe still was somewhere neither of us would ever see. The conversation then turned to Roy, the man Paula lived with for years and who bailed on her when she started going downhill. But not before ripping her off financially. Paula, Roy and I worked together at an agency, and even back then he was riding on her coattails. He was an account guy, but in reality he was a fraud - a talentless hack who specialized in ass kissing.

Roy is a story for another post. But I will say it's going to be an extremely bad day for him if we ever run into each other again.

On this visit I spent about 45 minutes with Paula. She got tired and agitated towards the end. A nurse had joined us in our walk, and Paula led us to the locked door of the ward. She wasn't trying to get out, and I don't even know if she understands the world she's left is on the other side. I hope not.

I've promised myself I won't let so much time go by between now and my next visit. It's a promise I'm going to do everything I can to keep. Paula won't know the difference if I do or not.

But I will.

Visiting Paula

Work in advertising on the creative side, and you find out pretty quickly that you only ever get to work with about five genuinely great account people. If you're lucky.

My friend Paula was one of the greats.

I met her 22 years ago when we worked at an agency downtown that handled McDonald's operator business. She was brilliant, funny and passionate about great work. She didn't suffer fools lightly, and approached her job with something I've often been accused of - an unfrightened attitude. It was a thing of beauty to watch her direct it equally towards clients, creatives and management.

It was impossible not to respect her for it.

She lived in Long Beach, and was a great advocate for the city. It was her convincing arguments (along with the fact it's my wife's hometown) that led us to buy a house and move here. We even used her realtor because Paula said he was the best. And if she thought so, there was no reason for us not to.

For years, every Christmas we'd go to her house in Naples for the boat parade on the canals. We talked frequently, even if it was just to check in.

When Paula became VP of Marketing for Disneyland Resort, she asked me to be the consultant on her search for a new agency. I told her I'd never done anything like that, and she said, "I think you can do it. Why wouldn't you?" We developed the strategy, created the assignment and went to the agencies pitching the business together. I remember flying with her to see some agencies in San Francisco on a morning with 75 mph winds in Northern California. The plane was buffeted around, sometimes pretty violently, from about ten minutes into the flight until we landed. Paula, who was not crazy about flying in the first place, had my hand in a vise grip the entire time. The experience of being the creative consultant was exciting for many reasons, not the least of which was the chance to be working with her again.

Eventually Paula sold her house in Naples and moved into one a bit further north in Long Beach.

As life so often does, it got crazy and we lost touch for a few years, despite the fact we were in the same city and only minutes away from each other. Or so I thought.

This past June, I had lunch with my friend Alison who worked with Paula and me at that downtown agency. Alison was an account executive under Paula. She too had moved to Long Beach, and also eventually wound up working at Disney. I met her in Burbank and we had a wonderful lunch, kicking around old times and catching up.

At one point, I mentioned I'd lost touch with Paula, and asked if she knew what was going on with her. She sighed and said, "Oh Jeff." A sad look came over her face, a look that said I don't want to be the one to tell you but I have to. I braced myself.

She told me that Paula had extremely advanced Alzheimer's. I was devastated and heartbroken.

Paula isn't that much older than me, but apparently it runs in her family. It found her mother at a young age as well. Alison told me where Paula was, and there was no question that I was going to go visit her. But truthfully, the idea of seeing her without her really being there scared me.

It took me two months after that lunch to work up the courage to go.

Paula had been in a long-term care facility in Long Beach, but by the time my wife and I went to visit her last month, she was gone. She'd been moved to another facility. Apparently she had hit another patient and was sent to a hospital for observation and to have her meds adjusted. She wasn't accepted back to the facility because they were unable to manage her feistiness (they should've seen her at the agency).

They didn't have the information about where she was taken at their fingertips because, as it turned out, this incident had actually happened a couple months before my visit. But they did give me the name and number of her conservator who told me where to find her, and expressed his appreciation that I was going to visit her.

The facility she's currently in is not in a great part of Los Angeles.

But ever since lunch with Alison, Paula has never been far from my thoughts. And today, the day before Labor Day, I went to visit her.

Alison made clear to me in the most compassionate way she could that the Paula I knew, my friend that I loved, wasn't going to be there. The woman I was going to see would look like her, but she wasn't going to remember any of our history. She wasn't going to know who I was. Which for some reason felt okay, because I know who she is.

When I got to the facility, I asked for her. A nurse escorted me to the lock-up area, a section where the most advanced Alzheimer's cases are. There are signs all over the door going in warning that patients may try to fight their way out when you leave.

Once inside, the nurse said Paula would probably be walking around. I first saw her talking to herself, walking towards me in the hall. She looked pale and thin, and her dark brown hair, always meticulously styled, was completely gray and disheveled. The nurse told her she had a visitor. Unfazed by the fact she didn't know me, I introduced myself and took her hand. She held on tight, just like the flight to San Francisco.

I remembered Alison had told me not to ask her questions as that upsets her, but just to listen or speak in statements. We walked around the facility and I listened and watched as Paula had a conversation with herself almost the entire time. Occasionally I'd chime in with something, and she would look at me, agree, then go right back to her inner talk.

I kept wondering if the old Paula, my Paula was in there. And if she was, could I somehow bring her out. Maybe if I told her a story about us, or about one of the many good deeds she'd done for me over the years, that would spark her into the moment for a few seconds.

Never underestimate the power of denial.

Years ago there was an episode of St. Elsewhere where Dr. Mark Craig's (William Daniels) mentor Dr. David Domidian (Dean Jagger) was returning to the hospital. Mark was thrilled, then shattered to learn that his hero had advanced Alzheimer's. Towards the end of the episode, Dr. Domidian has a single moment of clarity where he looks at Mark, recognizes him and says his name.

I understand life isn't like it is in the movies or television. But even though I knew better, even though Alison had warned me, I couldn't stop myself from hoping for one of those moments.

At the end of my visit, I was holding her hand and told her I had to go. I was standing and she looked up at me and said, "Ok." I told her next time I'd bring my wife with me. Then I told her how good it was to see her, and how much I'd missed her over the years.

She looked up at me, smiled, and continued the conversation with herself. However at one point, one of the things she said was "I love you too."

That was my moment.