Remembering Joyce

Jennifer knew her as Mom, Penelope and Harrison knew her as Granny, while I and many others knew her as Joyce. She left us in June having lived with Alzheimer’s for many years. We’ve been thinking of her a lot. She was a wonderful mother, grandmother and more.

Over the past 15 years or so that I knew her, she was never more happy than when surrounded by her daughters and grandkids. Her face would light up whenever she saw them and that beautiful smile of hers would be locked in place when she was with them enjoying a classic board game, coloring in a picture, filling out a page with stickers or playing a tune on her piano. She was totally devoted to her family.

When we lived in Seattle, we became friends with Nick Royle, a British professor of English, who we’d see every summer when his family would spend a couple of months visiting our neighbors Saleh and Lucy. Nick is married to their daughter Jinan, and our kids would while away the days together when they were in town.

Nick lost his mother to Alzheimer’s many years ago and in 2020 published Mother: A Memoir. In it, he recounted this story Jennifer had shared with him and Jinan late one evening in one of the many sessions we enjoyed together on our back deck over the years:

Some sufferers from so-called Alzheimer’s can lead lives with a degree of happiness. They can find things funny. They can be moved in moving ways. A friend’s mother for instance loved the music of Neil Diamond. The daughters fixed up for her to go to a concert. They accompanied her to the event. There were many thousands of people in the audience and the words “NEIL DIAMOND” blazed in bright lights above the stage. Their mother loved it. So many songs she had loved since her youth. And at one point she leaned over to one of her daughters and shouted in order to be heard. She shouted with joy: I don’t know who this guy is but he sure can sing!

While Alzheimer’s slowly took its toll on Joyce, it never took away her devotion to family. As time and space became fuzzy, her central concern was always her daughters or grandkids. For instance, sometimes when Jennifer called, she’d wonder where Jennifer was and when she’d be coming home to her. Or when speaking about what a grown grandchild might be up to, she’d be concerned that the grandchild’s mother wasn’t with her.

Joyce was the lynchpin of the family she raised and created. We’re blessed to have had her in our lives and will miss the laughter and smiles she shared with us.