[TIMELINE: 1960–2015]
My sister and I always got along very well, even though personality-wise we were really different. We had a strong relationship, and that became even more important later on because she trusted me to do all the right things for her. That trust was vital. As a caregiver, you have to have that trust.
But before I share my experience of caring for my sister during her illnesses—and what those years were like for her and our family—it’s important to share what she was like. It’s important to tell you about who she was, and what she meant to those of us who loved her.
Peggy was independent, capable, reliable, career-oriented, and pragmatic. She was musical, talented, stylish, generous, and funny. She was caring, always trying to help other people and animals in need. She was a team player and, though she could be kind of a quiet person, she was very, very social. For decades before her diagnosis at age 58, she was constantly busy and active with work, hobbies, and friends. I’ve no doubt that, if Alzheimer’s hadn’t come into her life, she would still be out there in the world having lots of new adventures, even well into retirement.
So watching her dementia progress was awful and scary, of course. The further she traveled down that road, the less I recognized her. We would be talking sometimes and I would feel completely untethered. I would wonder, “Who is this person? Is this a pod person? Where is my sister?”
For a caregiver, anticipating how a loved one’s personality and brain are inevitably going to change is one of the worst things about dementia, maybe second only to witnessing it when it happens. You feel a profound sense of loss immediately, and then that emotion just intensifies more and more deeply in the years that you have left together. At the start, my gut warned me, “This is going to suck in 10 different ways. Actually, you don’t even know yet all the ways this is going to suck.” And then…it really, really did. But I tried hard to steel myself, because I knew that it was awful and scary for Peggy, too, at least early on when she was cognizant of her deficits.
As she felt less and less like her old self, I had to keep on a brave face so that I could be there for her. With our parents already gone (Mom in 2012 and Dad in 2015), and our aunt and uncle at advanced ages, I became the one family member most responsible for her well-being.
Thankfully, Alzheimer’s did not change my sister completely, and I took great comfort in that. Core aspects of her personality perpetually shined through, such as her dedication to family, her enjoyment of music, her humor, her love of animals, her resilience, and her hopefulness. To me, that endless optimism was the essence of Peggy; she was great at making lemonade out of lemons. Her graciousness is something that I hope comes through in my story.
It’s really no surprise that family remained so important to Peggy throughout her entire adult life, since family played such an outsized and supportive role in our upbringing. We grew up in a big, boisterous Italian-American family in San Dimas, California—yes, the home of Bill and Ted! In our immediate household, there were three of us, each born two years apart: I was the oldest, Peggy was the middle kid, and our brother Les was the youngest. About an hour from us, in Anaheim, lived our Uncle Nick, Aunt Betty, and our closest cousins Sandy, Nikki, and Terry, who were only a few years older than us and more like siblings than cousins. We were all pretty tight.
The three of us were typical latchkey kids, catching episodes of Dark Shadows after school before our parents got home, except we were never really alone, since our grandparents and our Aunt Rosie (our mom’s sister) lived right next door. I imagine our dynamic growing up was similar to most large Italian families everywhere in that we saw everyone, all the time—uncles, aunts, cousins, you name it, constantly in casual proximity. And we would all get together every Sunday for spaghetti. It was always a crowd, probably 25–30 people, every week. Our poor grandmother!
We’d also go camping—with everyone—every summer in the San Gabriel mountains, which were only about an hour’s drive away. Our dad and I loved camping (and I still do), though it was never a favorite activity for Peggy or Les. It wasn’t our mom’s top vacation choice either, but it was wonderfully inexpensive for a family with three kids and it was close to home, so she was okay with it. I’m sure she also enjoyed the fact that so much of our extended family could be together at once. The adults would get to hang out and relax, while all of us kids could safely run amok.
All of our childhood traditions revolved around family (and food!) We’d get together for every single holiday you could imagine, including some of the major feast days of various Catholic saints. For example, every year (until recently), we would celebrate Saint Joseph’s Day on March 19. As is the Sicilian custom, we would set out a long table (with an altar at its head), covered in enough food to feed an army. There would be plates of fruit, pastries like Aunt Rosie’s cream puffs, and a bazillion different kinds of cookies. At our peak, we were making 108 different cookie varieties!
For the main course, we’d prepare a special spaghetti sauce that was only ever made for this occasion. Then a priest would come by and bless all of the food, and we’d invite over everyone we knew (and even people we didn’t). After the meal, any leftover food got donated to the church, for needy families. I wasn’t so much into the Catholic aspect of it, but I always enjoyed the hours of cookie baking with Aunt Rosie. Peggy would usually bake one or two batches with us, but it wasn’t really her thing. Mostly on this day she was just happy to be celebrating with family.
Obviously, many of our family members were super Catholic, including our parents, but my siblings and I drifted away as adults. I rebelled early and often, and Les wasn’t interested, either. Notably, Peggy accompanied our parents to mass for a long time, despite not having any strong attachment to it. I think it was because she knew it would make them happy; my sister always cared about everyone’s feelings, and was often the peacemaker of our family.
Around 1970, our dad got offered a new teaching position, so we moved more than 300 miles north to the much more rural Hollister, CA, which at that time held only about half the population of San Dimas. My parents loved the area, especially because some of our family had already relocated near there, plus it got us all away from an increasing smog problem in San Dimas. But it was a big culture shock for us kids after living in the sprawling suburbs of Los Angeles for years. As the oldest, I was probably the most dismayed when I first set eyes on Hollister. There really was nothing to do there for young teens, and I was painfully aware of its smallness.
At least our new school district had good music programs—all three of us ended up in band during our high school years. Les even went on to become a professional tenor saxophone player! I played alto sax for a while, then flute and piccolo (after I got braces and couldn’t play sax anymore). I also got involved in theater. Those were all fun outlets, but I never really liked Hollister, and I moved away not long after I graduated, first to UC Santa Cruz for college then to San Francisco for law school. Peggy played clarinet and bassoon, and sang in choir, too. Ultimately, her career aspirations weren’t in music, but singing was always important to her, always.
Throughout the late 1980s to mid-1990s, Peggy sang lead in several different bands. Though these were just side gigs, they meant a lot to her, and she sprang to life whenever she got on stage. (Naturally, she also dominated karaoke if the opportunity arose!) One band she was in for a long time with her good friend Tahoe was called Blondes Leading the Blind, and at one point they were getting together to perform several nights a week. Their repertoire included lots of ‘80s covers, with big, fluffy crimped hair and ‘80s-inspired outfits to match. They were really good!
After high school and junior college, Peggy moved away from then-tiny Hollister just like I did. She relocated about an hour north to the more bustling city of San Jose. It wasn’t the expansive hub of the tech industry like it is now (so its population was only a third of the size back then), but it was just exciting enough for Peggy, and she loved it. At the time, she had just started a new job at Happy Hollow Park & Zoo, which was under the umbrella of San Jose’s Parks and Recreation department. She enjoyed it so much that she stayed on with the department and worked to move up through the ranks, ultimately building a career there that lasted 30 years.
At the height of that career, my sister was managing more than 70 parks in San Jose, before she took early retirement (and a city pension) in 2016. She may not have been much of a camping buff growing up, but adult Peggy loved to be out and about in those parklands and trails. She was intimately familiar with (and proud of) each property’s unique features, flora, and fauna. (And that was one of the many reasons we later chose an assisted living facility right in the city, less than 10 minutes from where she used to live and adjacent to one of the largest parks she had managed.)
Peggy got married in 1988, but it didn’t work out; after the divorce (around 1996), she remained happily single. She dated, but never remarried. Mostly, she liked hanging out with our big extended family and with her friends—and she had a lot of them! Together they went to movies and saw live bands in concert, and they took all sorts of little weekend road trips around California, including Disneyland. As I recall, she and her friends visited the Happiest Place on Earth at least a couple of times a year in a big group. She had so much Disneyland memorabilia. So much.
Peggy also loved wine tasting and barrel tasting, which were easy weekend trips for her since she lived so close to wine country, aka Napa and Sonoma. She would go tasting with friends, or sometimes my partner Jon and I would accompany her instead. A winery visit usually means hanging out on the beautiful grounds and enjoying a glass of wine and some tasty food, so it’s really a nice time. We did that together for years. In Sonoma, the crowds are smaller, so we would also have the opportunity to ask the vintners a lot of questions, and we always learned a lot!
Wine was totally a Peggy thing. While Jon and I shared her enjoyment, none of the rest of our family were ever interested in winery tastings or tours, no matter how lovely the grounds could be. Wine just wasn’t really a big deal to them. They might serve it on special occasions, but it wasn’t around on a regular basis. In fact, our family will drink wine-in-a-box if you let them! Peggy, not so much. She would never. She always had excellent taste in wine, no question.
My sister collected wine, too. She didn’t drink a lot, believe it or not, but if she was invited somewhere, she always had the perfect bottle of wine to present to the host. Peggy even bought a special “wine jail” (a decorative rack that locks) to store and display some of her collection. It featured beautiful filigree metal gates and held more than 80 bottles. She loved that fancy thing!
However, animals were what really dominated her heart and her free time. Growing up, we always had cats in our family home, and as soon as Peggy moved out on her own she had adopted some more. She always had a menagerie of at least three cats, sometimes four, living with her. They were all rescues (such a Peggy thing) so while some were easily domesticated, others had a bit of feral left in them. She would do just about anything for an animal in need, and frequently donated to organizations that promoted animal welfare, even a group that takes care of bees!
Peggy’s love of animals was definitely the main attraction for her to begin what would become her life’s work in park management. Right out of the gate, her first job at Happy Hollow was the perfect opportunity to spend time with animals and contribute to their welfare.
Another big plus was that a career based in San Jose allowed her to visit family often. Our parents never moved away from Hollister, and we had other family in Gilroy, which is 45 minutes away. This close proximity to everyone made it easy for her to attend family gatherings for holidays and birthdays, and she could stay late for special work events without sacrificing family time.
Happy Hollow would remain where Peggy would spend most of her work life, but as her responsibilities with the Parks Department grew over the years, she became an adept steward of all of the city’s parks and the animals who live in them. She was also dedicated to the various special events and fundraisers the department would host periodically.
One event that I know she was most proud of was a silent auction to benefit mountain gorillas. She put a lot of work and time into it, as well as donating a really nice wine package for the auction. The fundraiser was a rousing success!
That was the kind of thing Peggy really liked, a social event that benefited animals in need. That was part of the essence of Peggy, and made her the happiest.