Erika Durlacher - Whistler Honoree

2021 IG Wealth Management Walk for Alzheimer's

On the third anniversary of her husband Peter’s passing, Erika Durlacher gathered up the dementia education materials she amassed while she cared for him to pass on to another person in her community now caring for a partner living with dementia. When Peter lived with Alzheimer’s disease, the couple felt they would be judged for his diagnosis. A decade later, Erika continues to work within the Whistler community to break down the stigma Peter feared from the time he was diagnosed.

“If we were out and someone would ask him a question, he’d always say, ‘Ask my wife,’” Erika says. “He was afraid to say anything for fear of making a mistake. From looking at him nobody would have known.”

As the disease progressed, Peter was slow to show physical symptoms, but eventually couldn’t hide the cognitive changes he was experiencing.
“People would say, ‘What’s Peter doing? Trying to steal the mail? He’s putting his keys in all the boxes.’ I realized much later, so many times when he came home and said there wasn’t any mail that he probably forgot which box was ours.”

Erika and Peter met dancing in a polka contest and fell in love under the moonlight cross-country skiing on Seymour Mountain. Peter was a ski instructor and while he was out skiing with their two children, both competitive skiers, Erika was back at the clubhouse cooking for the crew. After Peter’s diagnosis, they chose to access as much support and education as they could through the Alzheimer Society of B.C.’s North Shore and Sunshine Coast Resource Centre and they stayed engaged in the activities they loved for as long as possible. Erika and Peter used a wheelchair fit for the trails around their home, sailed off the North Shore and regularly visited the skate park to watch their young grandchildren. They also spoke openly about Peter’s diagnosis.

“We were the only ones to say, ‘We’ve got a problem, now what are we going to do about it?’” Erika says.

Erika knew her journey as a caregiver would be challenging – but she also knew it wouldn’t last forever and wanted to make the most of their final years. Erika and Peter travelled extensively while they still could through to the later stages of dementia. Now the memory of Peter dancing with Baroque performers who pulled him on stage in Salzburg exists alongside the extreme challenge of keeping him comfortable and well-cared-for on long-haul flights. The times he was so agitated, he’d try to exit a moving vehicle stand alongside those moments he’d sing his favourite hiking songs while he was losing his ability to speak, or invite his doctors out for a ski.

“We had lots of great times,” Erika says. “I’m just thankful that I had that opportunity to have Peter for 40 years. I could live on that for the rest of my life.”

Erika began fundraising for the Society long before Peter passed away in 2016. She’s now more driven than ever to support other people in Whistler who are on the dementia journey – the same community she was once afraid of being open with.

“People don’t want anyone to know that their husband or wife has dementia or memory loss,” she says. “But if they could just accept and work with it instead of fighting it, life could be so much more enjoyable.”

 

Join Erika this May for the Whistler IG Wealth Management Walk for Alzheimer's. Together, we make memories matter.