Kevin Riordan: A story of life and Alzheimer's

After 14 years of Alzheimer's, Martha Fletcher doesn't really know her husband anymore.

But Don Fletcher still knows his wife. And his new book, Martha and I, gives readers a deep sense of the beloved spouse, mother of six, and accomplished musician with whom he has shared a life for 71 years.

"I want them to see Martha as she was: totally warm, very extroverted, and self-giving," says Fletcher, 94, a mostly retired Presbyterian minister.

Still lovely at 91, his wife has lost the use of language and spends much of her day asleep or in a wheelchair in their cozy home at Lion's Gate in Voorhees. He spends much of his day tending to her needs.

Earlier in their marriage, the couple did church work in Chile, Mexico, Texas, and New Jersey. They raised six children; he pastored and taught, and she worked as a music director and organist, including stints at Trinity Presbyterian in Cherry Hill and the Lutheran Church of Our Savior in Haddonfield.

"Music - music with other people - was her whole life," says Fletcher.

He writes that before a crucial performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, Martha told her singers that the composer meant the piece "to be worship, to be a beautiful expression . . . offered to God. Let's make everyone who listens feel that when we sing."

Fletcher hopes his book will help people whose loved ones are disappearing into dementia. He writes that Martha "needs somehow to find her way back - needs me to take her (surely, I can take her) back to that lost place and time."

Having recently lost my mother to the disease, I can tell you that Martha and I brought me comfort as well as catharsis. The acknowledgment page cites my 2011 column about one of Fletcher's five previous books as a catalyst. I'm touched, but I hardly deserve the credit for his labor of love.

"The book was one of the best, cleanest-written manuscripts I've worked with," says Roger M. Williams, an editor in Washington.

"I'm impressed by Don's sensitivity, his humor and compassion, and his complete lack of self-pity," Williams, 79, adds.

Martha and I is being released Tuesday by Tate Publishing & Enterprises in Mustang, Okla. (tatepublishing.com).

"Writing it was therapeutic for my dad," says Marilyn Keith, 59, a teacher at whose Voorhees home Fletcher wrote his 201-page book - in longhand.

Said Sylvia Fletcher, 63, a consultant in Bethesda, Md., "I think the most powerful message of the book is the spiritual message . . . conveyed through his experience as Mom's caregiver."

The power of the book also lies in the straightforward way Fletcher describes dementia's bewildering course.

What seem almost laughable lapses gradually become concerning, then frightening. Martha loses her ability to bake, to socialize, to play music, and finally, to speak coherently.

Fletcher hopes readers share "a sense of serenity that's more than just finally making peace" with an incurable disease. And there is a certain serenity in his voice, as well as in the book's closing pages, as he describes his days with Martha.

Although Fletcher has assistance in the morning and evening, he is otherwise with his wife constantly.

"If I try to talk to her, she can't understand, and probably doesn't specifically know who I am," he tells me.

"But she probably does know that I'm the person who after the day is done comes and kisses her and is with her all night. She knows I am this warm body, near her."

Fletcher writes: "For me, what matters is the warmth and closeness, feeling her breathing, touching her face . . .

"I can't hold back the eclipsing shadow - I know that.

"But in our bedroom, with the distant whiteness of those streetlights that she likes to watch . . . I can hold her now."