Ann B. Keller pays tribute to her
husband's parents, George and Patricia Keller, by writing the forward to, So,
What Is Love?
Ann’s mother-in-law, Patricia,
wrote this memoir when she was in her eighties, caring for her husband George while he
declined with Alzheimer’s disease for twelve years before his death. Patricia
died four years later.
Patricia's writing is mushy,
sugary, tender, eloquent, and vividly detailed. She briefly takes us back to
her post World War II courtship with George, then through the years they raised
a family, continuing through their retirement when they renovated an old
Victorian home in Wellington, Ohio. The bulk of the text describes George's
battle with Alzheimer’s, and how Patricia struggled to care for him.
At times the reader will wince with
pain as George, at two hundred pounds, no longer recognizes Patty, a mere one
hundred pounds. Thinking she’s an intruder into their home, he attacks her, and
she has to call the police to subdue her own husband. You’ll gasp and be
repulsed when George tries to wash his face in a public urinal. You’ll chuckle
while shaking your head and moaning with sadness when Patty struggles to change George's
soiled diaper in a men's restroom, while other men listening think there’s
hanky-panky going on in the locked stall.
