After a week dominated by politics, we're turning our attention to a former governor whose greatest challenge had nothing to do with public office. For Marty Schreiber, it was caring for his wife through Alzheimer's, and learning when to ask for help.

🔨 After walking more than 1,500 miles through her local Lowe's to stay active following a stroke, Gretchen Sollo celebrated her 100th birthday with a surprise party thrown by store employees.

🏃 At 90, Marty Granoff completed the New York City Marathon alongside his son and grandson, 43 years after running his last marathon, wearing a shirt that read, “If you can read this, you are losing to a 90-year-old man.”

☕ GenX.InTheMiddle is hosting a free, in-person gathering for family caregivers in Maplewood, New Jersey, on Sunday, November 15, and a few seats are still available.

💕 At 109, best friends Velma Long and Dorothy Boggess have shared more than 80 years of friendship, and they're revealing their secrets to a long, happy life.

Martin Schreiber sat next to Elaine in freshman Latin class and knew right away. They married in 1961 and raised four kids. Whatever Marty wanted, Elaine made happen. When he wanted to sail, she bought a parachute at the army surplus store and sewed him one. When he ran for office, she was his hardest-working campaigner, spending hours handwriting letters to voters. When he became governor in 1977, she threw open the Executive Residence to artists, schoolchildren, and thousands of Wisconsin residents.

She built a career of her own, too. She finished her education degree while Marty's political career was at its peak, taught early childhood at Milwaukee's Silver Spring Neighborhood Center, and earned a master's in early childhood education at 56. After she retired, she led the center's capital campaign. Its child care center now carries her name.

In her early 60s, she started getting lost on drives she had made for a decade. A gifted cook, she ruined recipes she knew by heart and cried over them. That was the arrival of what Marty calls "the second Elaine." She lived with Alzheimer's for nearly 20 years, about half at home with Marty and half in memory care, until her death in 2022.

His book, My Two Elaines, is about learning to love both women. The story he tells now, after more than 1,000 speeches, is about the husband. If there were two Elaines, there had to be two Martys.

The first Marty made a promise at the kitchen table. On the day of the diagnosis, he and Elaine came home and sat down to figure out the future. Looking back, he puts what he did next in the form of a vow:

"Elaine, I love you so much. Here's what I'm going to do for you. I'm not going to eat right. I'm not going to sleep right. I'm going to be very arrogant and not ask for any help because I'm too proud. I'm going to start drinking. No matter what you say, sometimes I'm going to fly off the handle. That's what I'm going to do for you, because I love you so much."

"That's basically what I did," he says. "And that's basically what some male caregivers do."

About halfway through Elaine's illness, Marty's body started giving out. Trouble breathing. Heart valve problems. Hospital stays. "When there is a diagnosis of Alzheimer's, there are two patients," he says. "The person living with the disease, and then the caregiver."

His four adult children saw it before his doctors did. They sat him down. "Dad, if you don't do something, you're going to be dead before Mom." They had reason to worry. A 1999 study in JAMA found that spouses strained by caregiving had a 63 percent higher risk of dying over four years than spouses who weren't caregiving.

The harder part to hear was that Elaine wasn't getting the care she deserved. "I wasn't able to take care of Elaine the way I wanted to take care of her." He describes the conversation as his kids holding up a mirror. "I was a broken, rundown guy," he says. "It's almost like a sinking ship."

The answer he had been avoiding was memory care. He told a counselor he could not see "putting Elaine into a home." The counselor's reply rearranged everything: "You're not putting Elaine any place. You are giving her an opportunity to be who she is now."

That was when it clicked. Keeping Elaine at home had become his personal fight against Alzheimer's, and it had stopped answering the only question that mattered. Soon after, she moved into memory care.

Looking back, he was shielding Elaine and the life they had built in equal measure. The early years were a string of small public emergencies: Elaine drinking from a friend's wine glass at dinner, Elaine taking too long in an airport restroom while Marty stood outside, helpless, clothes on inside out. The first Marty managed it, corrected it, set her straight. Wrong day. Wrong neighbors. Wrong year. The second Marty had to stop being right and step into her world.

He knew the change had taken one afternoon at lunch in memory care. Elaine looked at him and started to cry. He asked what was wrong.

"I'm beginning to love you more than my husband," she said.

He resisted asking what was wrong with the other guy. She no longer knew him as her husband, and she loved him anyway. She was falling for the second Marty. It also prepared him for the day his name disappeared. "How painful is that?" he says. "But that's not what it's all about. It's about hearts touching. A hug, holding a hand, singing a song."

The loneliness was harder to fix. Alzheimer's, Marty rightly says, is not a chicken casserole disease. Neighbors show up at the diagnosis, then fade. Friends of 15, 20, 30 years stopped coming around because they didn't know what to say. Mostly he waited for someone to notice. "I was hoping someone would say, 'Marty, I understand what you're going through,'" he says. "And I never heard it."

He takes his share of the blame. For years, he believed asking for help meant admitting defeat. Now he sees it the other way around. “It was a matter of courage,” he says, “and going against my own ego and pride.”

Pressed on what he got right, he names two things: the memory care decision, and learning over time, "by osmosis, not the striking of lightning," to let go of the person who once was so he could embrace the person who now is.

Asked what Elaine would say if she could see how hard he has been on himself, he paused. He had never thought about it. "I think she would say, 'I'm glad you're trying to help other people. I'm glad you took something that wasn't very good and tried to make something better out of it.”

His advice to any caregiver: Know that you can't do it alone. To ask for help means you are not giving up. Asking for help is a matter of love, of courage. You have to take care of your own body, for your loved one, your kids, and yourself. Then join the world of the person who now is, so you can help them live their best life possible.  

Where to start looking for support:

You said it. This week’s submissions.

"Mom got caught trespassing in the backyard of her old home because she "wanted to see what they were up to." Oof."

"Love watching Dad fully laugh like he used to. Made me happy and sad at the same time."

"Dealing with a jury summons for a three-week trial. Just what a caregiver has time for!"

"Finally got home care and it's a huge disappointment. They served my parents donuts for dinner."

"Mom had to be hospitalized again...for the second time in less than a month. Got be there to advocate for her care."