Switzerland or Bust: A “Shining” Moment
By Greg O’Brien
The Swiss Alps rise from Lake Geneva like chariots of fire—a vertical rise analogous to the prophet Elijah’s ascent to Heaven. The hallowed Alps were formed 34-to-23 million years ago as the African tectonic plate nudged into the European plate, pushing the plates onto each other, akin, the experts say, to pushing up a pile of rocks, or thrusting two mounds of sand toward each other on the beach.
Perfection in the natural way.
Lake Geneva—far below the majestic peaks of Liskamm, Weisshorn, and the Matterhorn—glistens in the sun. The shape of a croissant, with a surface area of 223 square miles and a depth of more than a thousand feet at the deepest level, this glacial lake, the largest natural lake in Western Europe, gives new definition to inspiration and the conception of new memories. While Switzerland is known for neutrality—a historic appeasement of the French, Germans, and Italians to preserve a peace within—there is nothing neutral about this view.
in the fall of 2016 with Mary Catherine and Conor to speak in Lausanne on Lake Geneva before a world health conference on Alzheimer’s, Lausanne III: The Road to 2025: Delivering Next Generation Alzheimer’s Treatments. Each year, the Lausanne Dialogues convene international medical doyens to promote innovative strategies in Alzheimer’s research, regulation, and access. It was first held in 2014 as a response to the challenge articulated at the UK G8 Dementia Summit to stop Alzheimer’s by 2025. This goal was reinforced at the First World Health Organization Ministerial Conference on Global Action Against Dementia in 2015. Stopping Alzheimer’s by 2025, a bold initiative, requires innovation, collaboration, and creativity, the willingness to learn critical lessons from other diseases, and listening to those living with Alzheimer’s— one of the reasons I was asked to speak at the request of George Vradenburg, a driving force behind the Lausanne Dialogues.
The Lausanne Dialogues are organized under the auspices of The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (oecd. org), one of the world’s largest, most reliable sources of comparable statistical, economic, and social data, monitoring international trends, collecting data, analyzing and forecasting economic development, and investigating evolving patterns in a broad range of public policy area. The Lausanne workshop is supported by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation SERI, Switzerland, The Global CEO Initiative on Alzheimer’s Disease (CEOi), and Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI).
Clearly, I was out of my league, on stage with medical experts and brainiacs from around the world from Nigeria to Japan, Australia to England, Germany to Switzerland, and beyond. All I could think of, as I was called to the stage to speak, were lyrics from “If I Only Had a Brain:”
“I could while away the hours Conferrin’ with the flowers Consultin’ with the rain
“And my head I’d be scratchin’ While my thoughts were busy hatchin’ If I only had a brain ..
With apologies to the late Ray Bolger, the sinuous, peripatetic Scarecrow in L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, for those of us with Alzheimer’s—the early, middle, and late stages—the disease is a ride over the rainbow. Our heads are full of stuffin’.
Thank God for prompts and notes, yet another real-time example of perception not always resembling reality. I told the distinguished assemblage with great trepidation that I couldn’t talk about complicated medical issues, for all I did in high school was cut up a frog. But I spoke to them in laymen’s terms about living with Alzheimer’s in faith, hope, and humor, and the various strategies required to ply the currents of this disease.
“My hope,” I concluded, “is to connect some of the dots of Alzheimer’s.” I then read a stanza from William Earnest Henley’s classic poem, “Invictus:”
“In the fell clutch of circumstance
“I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.”
“There are great parallels,” I said, “between Henley’s Victorian poem and those living with Alzheimer’s today. Henley concludes his seminal work about the throes of unthinkable struggle, ‘I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.’”
We all seek to be captains of our soul.
There was a disconnect on the way to Lausanne. “Al” was bearing down, and I was demoted to the rank of private.
The Delta jumbo jet from Logan Airport in Boston landed in Amsterdam on its way to Geneva for the first leg of the trip. Amsterdam Airport Schiphol—the main international airport of the Netherlands, in a country where anything goes, certainly not the kind of place for someone grasping for the thread between perception and reality—is a cornucopia of humanity. It has all the ambiance of the Cantina bar scene in the original Star Wars in the pirate city of Mos Eisley on the planet Tatooine. As trivia aficionados observe online, the Cantina “is the haunt of freight pilots and other dangerous characters of various alien races...and sometimes a band of musicians named Fibrin Dan and the Modal Nodes.”
Dot-dot, dot-dot...da-da-dot; dot-dot, dot-dot...da-do-la-dot...
Amsterdam Airport, at first glance to an individual easily confused, is horrifically distressing: busy, buzzing, loud, lots of alien languages, and striking native dress, an etiological ordeal. Then there’s the incessant, mind-bending announcements of flights, delays, transfers, and cancellations in tongues that make ancient Babel sound like an entry Spanish 101 quiz. “Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech,” it says in Genesis 11:6.
The core of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Amsterdam and its airport are impressive by all rights, yet a clear disconnect for me. The voices, the noises, the diverse languages reverberated in my mind once again like the stabbing violin of a horror film.
I had to leave.
“I’m the hell outta here,” I told my wife, heading to any place perceived as sanctuary outside the terminal. “I’m done, just freakin’ done.”
“You just sit; you just SIT!” she shouted.
“Then I’ll pee again in my pants.”
“Fine,” she said, then after quick reflection instructed Conor:
“You go with your father to the bathroom. Do NOT let him out of your sight!”
I was under house arrest, no escape, indisputably in line for a “Pet Passport” that allows animals to travel easily between member countries without undergoing quarantine. Mary Catherine was probing for the paperwork. Thoughts of flying in a cage were illuminating. Stand down...So I did.
Finally, we boarded the flight to Geneva, then an hour and a half train ride to the resort town of Montreux on the northeast side of Lake Geneva in the canton of Vaud at the foot of the Swiss Alps, the self- styled “Swiss Riveria.” It was to be a staging area for the cerebral climb to Lausanne. I sat by myself in quiet reflection on the upper level of the train as it thundered past remarkable countryside approaching the Alps in The Sound of Music.
Montreux rises gently above Lake Geneva in tiers to vernal heights covered with woods and vineyards that shelter from north and east winds. Below along the lake, you can find fig, bay, almond, and mulberry trees, even cypresses, magnolias, and in places palm trees thriving in Mediterranean warmth. The town, liberated in 1798 by Napoleon, has distinct architectural styles—the most notable, the “Belle Époque” buildings of the grand hotels built at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, accommodating predominately to well-heeled English tourists; Queen Victoria was an admirer of Montreux and visited many times. Over the years, Montreux has given shelter to the likes of: English playwright, composer, actor, and singer Noel Coward; author F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda; Russian composer Igor Stravinsky; and Empress Elisabeth of Austria and Queen of Hungary.
A prime example of Belle Époque architecture is Le Montreux Palace with its yellow awnings and lush gardens that run down to the lake with views of the French Alps in the distance. The sprawling, imperial Montreux Palace is fully elegant, yet calmly welcoming in assiduous service of the Swiss style. So why not stay a few days among the European elite, I pondered. Hey, as a constituent of the great unwashed, I got plenty of money, it’s just tied up in debt.
And besides, the Montreux Palace is a good place to get lost.
Our room was as expected—gracefully, elegantly appointed, museum quality, with a balcony overlooking the snow-capped Alps. The beat below of Avenue Claude-Nobs was enticing. I wanted to explore.
“Not so fast,” I was told by my wife, the commandant. “You stay put in the room; look out from the balcony, write, read a book, or just stare at yourself...Conor and I will take a look around and come back for you. Stay here!”
And with that, the two exited the room. The door shutting behind them had the resonating cling of an iron cell in a prisoner of war camp.
“Green light,” I thought! “Green light...I got the green light.”
Alzheimer’s has a way of rendering one cerebrally color blind; a red light, a stop sign, becomes a green light. Go for it, often just because someone told you that you can’t. The Great Escape for me. Steve McQueen, a.k.a. Capt. Virgil Hilts, the “Cooler King” at Stalag Luft III, would be proud. Alzheimer’s in its apparitions has a way of bringing one back to the illusion of movies—some fanciful, some thrillers, some psychological nightmares. The trip to Switzerland and accompanying disconnects had moved the dial further for me than ever before.
In a blink, I was out the door, with iPhone in hand to respond to a room check from the commandant. I dashed to the right, away from the main elevator, to avoid detection and a trip back to the “cooler.” At the end of a long, isolated hall with oil paintings on the walls dripping in rich history, I spotted a remote stairwell. This was not to be a staircase to Heaven. I descended to what I thought was the lobby with the speed of a downhill skier, skipping four steps at a time. I was free in the moment.
The stairwell seemed to have no ending, an abyss of a downward spiral. At the bottom, there was no lobby, just white sheets draped over furniture, empty room after empty room. The place had the smell of mildew, as if someone had tried to extinguish the flames of hell. My mind was racing. I was lost; delusions were in full gait. I ran up to the next floor. Same frightful panorama. My cell phone couldn’t connect, no signal. Dammit, no signal! Can you hear me now, I cried within? In a flash, Le Montreux Palace had become the Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, and I was writer Jack Torrance seeking haunting solitude to create. “All work and no play make Greggie a dull boy...”
My racing imagination took me to new depths—to the end of the hallway, to what I imagined were rivers of blood and two freaky twins dressed like dolls, ghosts of the murdered Grady Twins. “Come and play with us...”
“Hell no!” I shouted, racing back up and down the stairwell, rifling for reality.
Reality was found on my third trip back to the basement. I heard more voices. In the words of Jack Torrance, “Things could be better...Things could be a whole lot better.” Ultimately, they were. I came upon two tall, thin guys dressed as bellmen. I was afraid to ask what hotel they worked at, or to see if they had robot legs. The two led me down a maze of dank hallways, then to a door. “Step away from that handle.” I felt like screaming. Too late for that. The door opened, and the grace of God came streaming in. Lights in my brain that had been flickering in this early stage were now at full power. I was back in the exquisite Montreux Palace lobby, having been furtively lost in an isolated section of the hotel, apparently closed for the off-season.
My cell phone was now vibrating in my pocket. It was the commandant.
“Where the hell have you been?!” she yelled.
“I was in hell,” I replied.
What was tantamount to imaginary ankle bracelets awaited my return to the room; a benevolent front desk clerk led the way. “Stay put” had escalated from a command to a death threat.
Two nights later, two days before the Lausanne Dialogues, lights in the brain went out again. At about 2 a.m., I raced out of the room, speech in hand. “I’m late,” I shrieked. “I have to give my speech.”
“Go back to bed,” both Mary Catherine and Conor shouted. I was wholly awake now.
“Bullshit,” I responded, running out into the hallway fully dressed, taking a left, not a right to the netherworld. I lost my way again. Giving up the ghost minutes later, I sat on the floor of the hallway, speech in hand, my head bracing the far wall, eyes to the ceiling. Thank God the Grady Twins were sleeping.
Conor, warden in training, finally caught up with me. “Holy shit,
Dad! Back to the room...”
Forty-eight hours later, the half-hour train ride from Montreux to Lausanne, along the shores of Lake Geneva, was uneventful other than celestial splendor at the hands of the Almighty. Still, I was shaking off the symptoms of synapse disconnects. Disembarking the train and hailing a cab to the Starling Hotel near the SwissTech Convention Center in Lausanne—not far from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology)—would prove challenging. Conor was all over it with his iPhone apps and extras. Mulish Mick that I am, two suitcases in hand and carting a backpack, I was intent on finding my own way.
“Stay with us,” Mary Catherine yelled.
“Not gonna happen,” I said in the muddle.
Green light, green light. I headed up a separate staircase to the street. We were divided yet again by hundreds of people and a wide, congested thoroughfare that seemed to provoke piercing horn- blowing and road rage. In an instant, my mind took me back to in the pirate city of Mos Eisley on the planet Tatooine.
“Stay put,” Conor instructed Mary Catherine. “I’ll find him.” The two whipped out the “Where’s Waldo” app on their phones; there I was, a blip on the screen. Conor then crossed the thoroughfare like Moses parting the Red Sea. His piercing glare almost burned my corneas; I thought he was going to fit me with a child harness and leash. Who are the parents now?
Strike three! And I hadn’t even given my speech yet. We drove in the cab to the hotel in silence. I would be redeemed that night at a special speakers’ dinner held in downtown Lausanne at the posh Lausanne Palace on Rue du Grand-Chêne in the chandelier-adorned Ustinov Room, surrounded by some of the brightest minds on the planet. I could only digest every other word, and that’s just off the menu. But Mary Catherine and Conor were suitably impressed, and chatted up a storm with the intellectual elite. I thought I was home free. Later, the “good night” part back in the Starling Hotel room didn’t go so well. I mouthed off again to my wife, as the confusion, rage, and darkness of the last few days crested. Caregivers bear the brunt of this disease when those of us afflicted are out on Pluto.
We all got up early the next day as if nothing had happened. In Alzheimer’s, every day is filled with new sets of trials. After dressing in a stylish blue suit, I started wandering the room. “Put your shoes on,” my wife instructed. “I can’t,” I said to myself, “someone is standing in them.” It’s happened before. I walked toward the apparition, and in a puff it was gone.
My speech before the Lausanne Dialogues went well. I followed my prepared script about living with Alzheimer’s, the fight to stay on the planet. “My life slowly is changing,” I said in conclusion, “yet it remains the same, a slow demise of who I once was. On bad days, I feel a shadow of myself. Like Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland where ‘nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t.’
“Alzheimer’s,” I also remarked, “is a cunning, calculating killer. Perhaps Ernest Hemingway said it best, ‘The world breaks everyone, and afterwards, some are strong in the broken places.’
“Be strong in the broken places...”
I done good. But little did anyone know at the Lausanne Dialogues the ugliness of what had transpired days earlier. Even the brightest are capable of a drive-by, unable to penetrate the unfathomable darkness of this disease. And that’s as terrifying as the disease itself.
We left Lausanne late in the afternoon after the speech and panel discussion, taking a train to Geneva for the flight back to Boston early the following morning, and staying the night at the Starling Hotel branch at Geneva International Airport, a short walk from the train. We all desired to tour downtown Geneva, a city that hosts the largest number of international organizations in the world, some of the best museums, and world-class architecture.
“How do we get there?” Mary Catherine asked the receptionist at the front desk.
“Bus number five,” the man said hurriedly.
That didn’t sit well with me. “How do we find bus number five?” I inquired.
“It’s just around the corner,” replied the man, distracted with check-ins. Without looking up, he pointed left to a hotel exit. “Not far from here.”
“So is Paris,” I said in a loss of filter.
I got the glower from my wife.
We headed stage left, out the side door, to a quiet country lane, more suitable to golf carts than a city bus line.
“So this is ‘around the corner,’” I interjected, race-walking in search of a bus stop that I was convinced didn’t exist, part of the paranoia of this disease. The disconnect deepened as numbness, as it does often, crept up the back of my neck and enveloped the mind. I was fogged in again. My pace quickened as I tried to pinpoint “around the corner.” Soon I was running; not sure why, but I was running, faster and faster away from Conor and Mary Catherine. “This is bullshit,” I kept saying in symptomatic rage that now comes on without notice. “This is bullshit.”
My mind was racing; I felt we were lost, and I wanted out of this nightmare.
I took the first left-hand turn, heading out to what seemed like a busy road. I came upon two middle-aged women along the way and asked where the bus stop was located. They looked at me like I was from Pluto.
“Bus-ssss Stop-pppp,” I said drawing out the words.
No response. They didn’t comprehend. They thought I was just another crazy American, which I am.
So I kept running, with Conor and Mary Catherine farther and farther in the rearview mirror.
Then it began raining buses. I saw several of them whizzing in the distance ahead. Amen! I ran faster. Conor and Mary Catherine now chased after me with a pace that suggested they feared the world was flat and that I might fall off, perhaps to their delight. One of the buses came to a screeching halt at the side of the road on its way to busy, bewildering downtown Geneva. I sprinted toward the side door and jumped in, grabbing the first empty seat—safe at last, safe at last. The only fly in the ointment was that Conor and Mary Catherine hadn’t caught up yet with the bus. Seconds later the side door closed. I looked up, and I saw them huffing and puffing, faces planted against the window of the door, looking in with horror at me.
I noticed Conor turning to Mary Catherine and staring at his mother in deep thought. Later he confided that he was thinking: “Hey, what’s the worst that can happen? Dad will get lost again, but he’s a survivor. Someone will figure it out for him, and Mom and me will get a needed break....”
Nah...flushed with Irish guilt and in primal response mode, Conor literally forced the bus doors open to get his mother and then himself on board. We were a family again. “All good?” I asked. Neither wanted to talk to me, until after a first round at a tavern downtown.
Cheers!
I had pushed them to the limit. On my next international trip, if there ever was one, I was told, we’d be accompanied by a squadron of kickass handlers. “Do you get that?” I sheepishly shook my head like one of those cheap toy Chihuahuas that look out the rear windows of old Chevys.
“Ah, it’s all part of the experience,” as Clark Griswold would say.
Early the next morning, we all flew back to Logan Airport, collectively with a greater understanding of the progression of Alzheimer’s and a full appreciation, on all fronts, for what we had just experienced—the remarkable beauty of Switzerland, the grace and intellect of the Lausanne Dialogues, the unremitting struggle to stay in the moment, and how that touches those one loves, and those on the way.
Boston or bust...