Living life fully, even at last bat

One of the many pleasures of writing a column for this newspaper is the connections you make with readers.

Free Press people are good people, in my experience, and generous in sharing their feedback, whether they agree with my opinions or not.

Sitting in my quiet home office in St. John’s, N.L., roughly 3,200 kilometres from the Free Press as the crow flies, I feel isolated at times, cut off by geography, culture, history and circumstance from the people I am hoping to reach with my words.

I’ve always thought a certain kind of newspaper column can spark conversation between the person writing and the people reading. In receiving your messages, I am learning about your lives and loves and losses — backstories that are often far more interesting than my own. And every now and then, a post lands in my email inbox that stops me in my tracks.

In September, I heard from a Winnipegger living in Vancouver about my column on the dying days of summer — the “odd, uneven time,” as dubbed by poet Sylvia Plath.

“I just read your lovely article in the Winnipeg Free Press today,” Paul Sweatman wrote. “It reminded me of Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer, weaving together themes of nature, love and loss. I am at last bat, approaching 77, with Alzheimer’s, after a stroke, needing a walker but still full of yearning.”

The juxtaposition of “at last bat” and “still full of yearning” intrigued me. I have spent a lifetime trying to understand how some people are able to look mortality squarely in the eye and keep on living life as fully as they can. I know well what it is to feel yearning, but I also tend to compulsively watch for death’s approach in the rearview mirror, hoping he’s not in the blind spot of anyone I love.

I have never been able to attain the level of acceptance and equanimity that people like Paul have achieved, so I wanted to talk to him, and I wanted to know more.

Over the two decades that my mother has had Alzheimer’s, I’ve never been able to talk to her about it. She was firmly in denial until the point became moot.

Paul Sweatman is glad to talk about it.

And write about it.

In elegantly composed Substack posts, he plumbs his feelings and describes his Alzheimer’s progression, with thoughtfulness and wry humour. (See: paulsweatman.substack.com)

He says he views the space for his writing as “a place to talk about the fog, the flashes of clarity — and the stubborn hope, the love, that keeps us fighting.”

In a piece subtitled “Another dispatch from dementia” from December 2025 about his mischievous boyhood growing up in Crescentwood, he writes, “Memories are, for reasons readers will know by now, especially precious to me…”

In a phone call last week, Paul (whose son is Free Press arts reporter Conrad Sweatman) told me he was in Stage 4 on the seven-step scale of cognitive decline and has no desire to go any further down that ladder.

“I’m bound and determined not to go into Stage 5,” he said.

We talked about medical assistance in dying and our shared hope that one day soon, the ability to request MAID in advance of losing one’s cognitive acuity will become a legal alternative in our respective provinces.

“I don’t know why they wouldn’t (allow it),” Paul said. “I think they’ll get there. I know there are philosophical arguments against it, but I mean — you know, good grief, it’s my life.”

He says he cries sometimes at the irrevocability of his diagnosis. Still, he is living life with eyes wide open, embracing the warmth and love and laughter that surround him and looking forward to welcoming a new granddaughter to the family.

“I kind of took it in stride,” he says of his condition. “It’s you know, just a fact of life. You just kind of roll with it.”

“Alzheimer’s disease isn’t always uncomfortable,” Paul wrote to me in an email. “Apart from the pleasant trips to my past, I can feel great joy.”

And with that, he answered a question that has been burning within me for more than 20 years. Can someone with Alzheimer’s, whose memories are being lost in the ether, still feel happiness?

Yes, Paul says. Yes. Without hesitation. As he writes on Substack: “I have no doubt about the diagnosis. No second opinion needed. People still say, ‘You seem so with it,’ ‘So sharp, so quick-witted.’ That’s because I work at it.

“I suppose I’m overcompensating. But it helps. I enjoy the process. It relieves those around me of sad faces and ‘oh, dears.’

“Why make others feel that way? It’s no fun for them or for me. I mean, what the hell … I still have a personality and enjoy life. Sometimes intensely.

“Peggy Lee sang, ‘Let’s break out the booze and have a ball.’”

Pam Frampton lives in St. John’s.

Email: pamelajframpton@gmail.com