Following the death of Sandra Day O’Connor, I saw a photo of her with my father, Ronald Reagan, after he appointed her as the first woman to the Supreme Court. They were outside, on the White House grounds, walking side by side, smiling, visibly deep in conversation. They were two athletic, strong people, determined to make a difference in the world.
I find it poignant to see them in this form, knowing, as we now know, that both would later be eroded by dementia. Both would make the rare choice of making the news of their diagnosis public. And both would die from complications of the disease, which always wins in the end.
But before all that, illness would come to Sandra Day O’Connor’s husband, John Jay O’Connor III.
The judge will long be remembered for breaking the gender barrier on the Supreme Court, a courageous public victory that reverberated throughout the American justice system, into the legal profession for which she had to fight so hard to access it, in all workplaces across the country. But she also deserves credit for breaking a second frontier: she spoke with rare frankness about how Alzheimer’s disease manifests itself – with its heavy responsibility and complex ethical issues – within the private confines of a marriage.
Sandra Day and John O’Connor met in the early 1950s, when they were both students at Stanford Law School. A date to work together on a Law Review article stretched into a few beers, and soon they had 40 dates in 40 days. John was charming and impressed with his intellect. At the time he asked her to marry him, she reportedly refused three other proposals (including one from William Rehnquist: “To be specific, Sandy, will you marry me this summer?” “). She accepted John’s and they married in 1952.
She followed him to Germany when he was serving in the army; upon their return, they settled in Arizona, where they raised three sons until his appointment in 1981 necessitated a move to Washington, DC. “The first 25 years,” she would say later, “it was he who made the decisions: where we would live, what job he would accept, what he would do, what our life would be like. And after going on the field, I’m afraid I made a lot of those decisions… It balanced out.
When John was diagnosed in 1990, Justice O’Connor cared for him as best she could. “In the early days of my husband’s illness,” she later told a Senate committee on aging, “I often dragged him to court with me because he couldn’t be left alone. » She added: “Many caregivers make equally difficult decisions every day. » As she explained, “Alzheimer’s disease is a family disease.” In 2005, she announced that she would resign to spend more time with her husband. But over the next year, it became clear that he needed a different type of care. The decision was made to place him in an institution.
My father had died two years before, and during the decade of his illness, I paid close attention to what other people chose to share about Alzheimer’s. There has been remarkable silence about placing a family member in a facility designed to provide safe and appropriate care. I so admired Sandra Day O’Connor’s open-mindedness and imagined the thousands of people in similar situations who felt grateful that someone was shining a light on a dilemma that so many people suffer from in The shadow.
In 2007, she went even further, allowing her son Scott to reveal that John had fallen in love with a resident of the facility – and that he had done so with the former judge’s blessing. In an interview with KPNX-TV, a Phoenix station, Scott described how his mother would watch John and his new partner sitting together on a bench, clearly in love with each other. “Mom was delighted that Dad was relaxed, happy and comfortable living here.” She continued to visit him, even though he no longer recognized her.
People with Alzheimer’s disease lose connections, memories fade, but the desire for companionship runs deep, deeper than the disease. It is quite common for patients to develop new romantic or even sexual relationships. But it’s something that few people feel comfortable talking about.
A decade later, she spoke about dementia again. This time it was his. She did as my father did, writing a letter to her “friends and fellow Americans.” In it, she said, “While the final chapter of my life with dementia can be challenging, nothing has diminished my gratitude and deep appreciation for the countless blessings in my life. » It was his last public statement.
A person’s legacy is not limited to the grand course of history; Sometimes it’s about discrete choices that touch the lives of others. We will never know how many people were touched by Sandra Day O’Connor’s candor, how many people she inspired to let their husbands or wives find a different kind of happiness than the one they once imagined. She chose to remain firmly in love and happy with the man she spent so many years with. This too is worth remembering.
Patti Davis is the most recent author of “Floating in the Deep End: How Caregivers Can See Beyond Alzheimer’s.”
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