In 2006, Manuel, his Mexican wife Lita, and their children were living in Indianapolis (USA), and in a preventive health program, Lita was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. After coming to Spain, she spent the last ten years in the Laguna Care Hospital until her death last year.
After a conversation with the psychiatrist Enrique Rojas, a great friend of his, he wrote the book 'Navegando del duelo a la esperanza' (Navigating from mourning to hope), published by Free Booksin which she has offered an emotional survival manual for those facing the disease. "This is a text that mixes resilience and hope," wrote Dr. Enrique Rojas, who often appears in this conversation with Lita's husband, and who prefaced the book.
Naval engineer Manuel López-López, who has three children and six grandchildren and is in love with the sea, has explained in 176 pages practical advice for accompanying a sea sick person. Alzheimer'sbased on their personal experience; messages for caregivers; and stages and strategies that can help in the transition from grief to hope.
Now, in the interview, he goes off script, and talks about how he feels about this moment. We almost kept our questions to ourselves, and listened to him.
You use sea images when talking about the Alzheimer's process.
- When you find that the person who has been your 'half person', so to speak, because I was lucky enough to find my wife very young, and we have been together all our lives, then the first part of the breakup is extremely hard. Because you see that the other person, it is not that they are gone, because that is one of the things I have learned during this time, that they do not leave, they are there. What happens is that we continue to insist on communicating with them in a way that they no longer communicate.
At the beginning, this had a great impact on me. In fact, during the whole process, there was a very noticeable deterioration. When, at the end of the issue, we were approaching port, there was a decision to be made. To say, this is as far as we have come and this is the end, or to say: this is as far as we have come, and now we are going to start another navigation. Fortunately, I was lucky enough to meet a number of people who helped me find the next sailing.
The spiritual aspect has been fundamental, he reveals. The invisible people...
- Yes. I think that the thought that they are still there, that they are helping us to find our next path, and that above all, it is true, or I feel it, that there is that next navigation, is what gives one peace and serenity, because if not, it would be horrible, wouldn't it?
I think that all this, in the end, concludes, and this is a little of what I have tried to learn in these 17 years -I am a man with a technical background-, but this cannot be learned, because it is not a problem to be solved, it is a state to live with,
That is very important, because what I call the invisible people are the ones that lead us to that situation of looking for the next stage. And in my experience, it has been one of the great discoveries, to see that the invisible people are the ones who create the future. People that many times we don't even know their names, but many times I talk about it. They are people who do not do it for money, they do it out of compassion, out of empathy, out of charity, although now the use of words that have religious connotation is badly considered.
Tell a lesson learned from caring for your wife, Lita.
- I think that in this whole process, the discoveries that one is having, at the end, the person, when you are alone, and you are in the middle of a silence, that is an important topic for me. During all this journey, I have been transforming a verbal communication into a communication with silences. And for me, in this disease, silence is fundamental. I think it is the most important thing.
And we think that what we have to do is to make them remember, to make them talk, to make them answer us..., No, no, they know where they are, and one look is enough for you to see how they know where they are.
You mean your wife, don't you?
- Yes, yes. And besides, she was in a residence, where she has been for ten years, of the Foundation. Vianorte-LagunaAnd I have had a great relationship with the rest of the people who were there. That feeling that you get when you go into a nursing home for Alzheimer's patients, that they are disconnected, and that is not the case.
When you go in and look at them, they sense that connection, which to me is tremendously important. Because many times you might think: they are parked. It's not true. They are connected, and what they are waiting for is someone to look at them and connect them with their silence. That is fundamental, and that is what those people do, who many times we don't even know their names, but who are with them all day long.
This, for me, is the great lesson I have learned during this time. This is not an economic issue, it is something very different.
You have already answered me something else. What would you say to a family member, a caregiver....
- Yesterday a colleague called me and he asked me a question that really struck me. It will be two years in February, my wife passed away in February 2023, and there are days when I am more tender than others, aren't there? The question was: would you take care of your wife again, just like you took care of her before? That question is for me the summary of the whole process. And my answer is this: I would start again tomorrow.
(Manuel gets emotional, and recovers after a while. We continue).
- And then there is another series of elements that enter into this whole process, which is what is in the book I call it 'The Perfect Storm'. And that's because not one person leaves. The perfect storm is for those who stay. For me, dismantling my house has been tremendously emotional, because you dismantle the house and you dismantle your memories. When we presented the book, I told my son: you have to come with me.
"Manolo, look for the next port."
The truth is that it has all been too much together. When she passed away, I went to Dr. Enrique Rojas, the neurologist, with whom I have been very close friends for many years, and he told me: look Manolo, what you have to do is to look for the next port. For that, take the logbook, which I had been writing since day zero, with the daily emotions.
This is a subject that people should take into account. Because many times, when you read what you have done after eight days, you start to see aspects that you had not seen before -our brain is something absolutely unknown to me-, and that helps us to value things. Enrique Rojas told me: within a year you have to have this on the street, and I had only written strategic plans, balance sheets, company stuff.
Did he give you the idea?
- He put the obligation on me. It is one thing to have an idea, and another to have an obligation imposed on you. I also have the theory that things are not casual, they are causal. A series of things began to happen to me, when my wife was at the end of her life, and Enrique Rojas appeared, with whom I had not seen for 50 years. My only objective and project in life was to take care of her. I went daily to see her at the residence. So much so that Telemadrid found out about it and made a video. And I thought, what I have learned, surely it can help someone. As long as it helps one person, it will be worth it. That was the argument he used, and with which he convinced me.
This happened after his wife passed away, or before?
- My wife dies in February, I reconnect with Enrique Rojas the first week of January, he receives me in his office the following Tuesday, and in that meeting he "imposes" the subject on me. And my wife dies three weeks later.
This is causal, you say, not casual.
- That's right. Moreover, in the first talk we had, Enrique Rojas revealed to me an aspect that can happen to people who have had a long, complicated professional life, doing interesting things -I left Spain in 1970-. And that is to get into what I call a comfort capsule. Spiritual issues exist, but they are not the ones that really guide your life. Enrique gave me five things to work on, and one of them was the spiritual area.
But you were already a Christian...
- Yes, yes, but I don't know. It's a matter of putting values in line with your behavior. I can be a Real Madrid supporter, but I don't have to go around telling everyone. At that time, I was lucky that the problems I had been having, had not forced me to develop an important spiritual activity. My wife and I, from the very first moment, tried to make our children better than us. And with that simple expression, we organized our life. Enrique Rojas, for me, was an 'envoy'. A person sent to tell me this.
