The Widower

Photo of a Smiling Cheryl Belied the Daily Struggles

A photo I posted three years ago popped up on Facebook memories the other day. Such pictures surprise me from time to time. This one was particularly poignant. It showed my late wife, Cheryl, wearing a stocking hat, smiling in the late-October sunshine at Perkins Stadium, home of the UW-Whitewater football team.

The Warhawks have been a force in Division III college football for a couple of decades. This picture was from homecoming on Oct. 30, 2022. You wouldn’t know it from looking at her photo, which accompanies this column, but Cheryl was living at a memory care facility three months later and dead of Alzheimer’s in less than sixteen.

My late wife, Cheryl, smiles while seated at Perkins Stadium for UW-Whitewater’s 2022 homecoming game. Our early arrival explains the sparse crowd.

Cheryl earned a teaching degree from UW-Whitewater in 1970 and worked seven years as a teacher’s aide at St. William Elementary School here in Janesville, Wisconsin, before her position was eliminated in 1982 due to budget restraints. She then took a job as news clerk at The Janesville Gazette, where we met when I arrived as Sunday editor in 1987. After we both went through divorces, we wed in 1998.

Because Cheryl was proud of her alma matter and we both enjoyed football, I talked her into attending the game on that beautiful autumn day in 2022. The journal that I kept for a decade, as she descended into dementia, fills in further details.

“Whitewater blew a 21-point halftime lead but won on a final-play 49-yard field goal that bounced off the crossbar and through.”

The final score: Whitewater 30, River Falls 27.

“Amazing game,” I wrote. “Halfway through, Cheryl wanted to use the restroom; when we got back to our seats, she asked who was playing.

“Every time she saw a UW-Whitewater sign as we walked a mile to the stadium, it was like the first time. ‘Oh, my alma mater.’ After the game, on our way back to the car, I had to repeat in rapid succession an explanation of who won when I kept telling her how amazing the game was.”

That night, Cheryl refused to take a bath despite not having bathed in more than a week.

I wrote, “I should have pointed out that, by using a stadium toilet, it’s like rubbing butts with the 100 other women who also used that toilet since it was last cleaned.”

That smiling 2022 photo of Cheryl belied our daily dementia struggles.