Editor-in-Chief Gary Barg sat down with
Barry for an open and frank discussion
about life as a family caregiver.
Gary Barg:
The thing about Alzheimer’s that is
so insidious is your loved one is
still there, but they are not there.
It is the true long goodbye and
denial is so easy to do. Could
you talk a little bit about how you
walked through that process?
Barry Petersen:
The worst part was realizing
afterward what I had done; and not
realizing at the time how people
were reaching out to help me see it,
but I could not. I guess I am
not unusual in that sense. How
could it be Jan? She is young.
She is really vibrant. She is
great. There is no way she
deserves to get this disease.
It cannot be happening. I think that
drove a lot of my decisions, some of
them good, some of them bad; but it
is a huge part of this denial and
this disease feeds it, just feeds
it.
Gary Barg: You
mentioned our Reverse Gift List
concept in the book, which is asking
someone not only to come to dinner,
but bring dinner, do things, give me
gifts. As a caregiver, I need
to manage this and I need you to
work for me. How did you get
that kind of help from your friends
and family members?
Barry Petersen:
Caregivers are people who are
incredibly focused on what they are
doing in a solitary, lonesome way.
Every day, their world shrinks a
little more because the person
dealing with Alzheimer’s needs more
attention, needs more care.
Life responsibilities keep shifting
over to the caregiver side—writing
the checks, getting the groceries,
picking up the kids, whatever you
want to call it. They
increasingly fall on the caregiver
at a time when the caregiver is
increasingly in demand because the
disease is taking more and more of
the person away. I think
people who are caregiving in the
situation lose themselves. So
if you call them up and say, “Can I
help,” their answer is going to be,
“No, I am fine. I am doing
great.” Do not call them up and
say, “What can I do?” Call
them up and say, “I am bringing
dinner on Thursday night; go to a
movie” or “I am coming over on
Tuesday afternoon to take care of
the person. Go shopping, go
have a cup of tea, just get away.”
I think it does two things: it
obviously helps break the process
with the person who is giving care;
but the other thing is that it
allows the caregiver to step away
and realize how he or she is doing.
In a career spanning more than three
decades with CBS News, Barry Petersen
has reported on everything from wars to
Paris fashions and from the return of
American jazz to Shanghai, China. His
stories have been datelined from
virtually every continent. He has
interviewed Hollywood stars including
Jimmy Stewart, Bill Cosby, Pierce
Brosnan and Sir Anthony Hopkins, as well
as the leaders of the Bosnian war who
were later tried as war criminals.
He has been honored numerous times for
his writing and reporting, and shared
both an Alfred I. Dupont-Columbia
University Award and a George Foster
Peabody Award as part of CBS Radio’s
coverage of the democracy uprising at
Tiananmen Square. Recently he
wrote a thoroughly compelling book,
“Jan’s Story”, about his life as a
family caregiver for his wife, Jan, who
was also a CBS news professional, after
her diagnosis with early onset
Alzheimer’s disease.