For 29 years, they’ve known him all over the world as Mr. Garlic, the happy, healthy ambassador of Gilroy’s annual homage to the bulbous beauty of the stinking rose.
To his family, Gerry Foisy, 73, is simply dad. Now they have gathered around him as never before because dad is very sick.
Four months before his final curtain last week as the Gilroy Garlic Festival’s costumed garlic mascot, Gerry Foisy was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
No one knows how long he will live or how quickly the disease will devastate his body and mind. All they know is the outcome is not in doubt; there is no cure, the disease is terminal.
“I am not enamored of the future but at the same time I know it will eventually happen. We will probably alter my [final] directives as we get closer, while I am still able to comprehend what is going on,” he said. “Eventually I am going to pass and meet my maker and I don’t want to hurry the process.”
To speak at length with Gerry, there are few if any outward hints that he has a problem. Indeed, he feels okay most of the time.
“I still think I am doing pretty fine. The only times I feel [a problem] is when I walk out of a room and forget where I am going; it happens to a lot of people.”
Jeanne Foisy, 63, knows better; she sees the progressively worsening changes in her husband’s memory and behavior. He has had some uninhibited moments, another sure symptom, blurting out things in public that one typically would not say.
And yet he readily recites stories from his Ohio childhood on the banks of the Lake Erie, scenes flecked with detail and nuance—his uncle’s grocery store, his father’s sand dredging operation, driving his parents to California when he was 20—and staying.
As for meeting, wooing and wedding the love of his life—they have been married 33 years—no detail escapes him; not the scene at the Beehive Lounge in Gilroy, not the date, Dec. 31, 1982, not the event, a New Year’s Eve party, not even the names of everyone around the table that night. And for sure not the fact that they married eight months later.
But ask him his grandkids’ names, ask him how to get to the store, ask him anything that has to do with short-term recollections and he is often lost. He can’t drive a car anymore.
It’s typical of the disease, said Jeanne—long-term memory intact, short-term in shambles.
During a nearly two-hour interview on their sun-spashed patio, both tear up and cry more than once.
They wanted to talk about their situation in the hopes of helping others, and insisted that their friend Pat Golden’s story also be shared as an inspiration to others to get involved in the search for an Alzheimer’s cure.
Gerry seemingly takes it all in stride, even the March diagnosis after a couple of years of on-and-off hints and telltale symptoms following a pair of traumatic head problems that might explain the onset of the disease, although no one knows for sure.
The first was a heavy dose of pain medications, which put him in a sort of medicinal coma and reduced oxygen to his brain for a period of time. The second was a fall from a ladder that resulted in a blow to his head.
Head trauma can be an Alzheimer’s trigger, but there’s no way to be sure in Gerry’s case, Jeanne said. Indeed, only after an autopsy can a certain diagnosis of Alzheimer’s be made, she said.
“I really didn’t know how bad it was, I thought I was really doing fine,” Gerry said during an interview Monday at his San Jose home. “I feel I am able to do a tremendous amount of things I have done in the past,” he said.
For those around him, the toll has already been high, and it will only get worse.
Daughter Stephenie Marfia, 45, of Dallas, Texas, is a longtime nurse who knows what’s ahead.
“I have had a lot of experience with families dealing with this and watching their loved one fade away mentally but still be there physically.
“I am just really sad that dad has got this diagnosis and we have to sit and watch him fade away and not be able to do anything about it but to love him and comfort him and make sure he has what he needs and rally around him and mom as a family.”
She had seen things over the past couple of years that did not look right and urged testing.
Now, she said, “We just make the best of it as we go, know that drastic changes will come and some will be faster than others but they will all come.
“Our intention is to keep dad at home as long as we possibly can, hopefully till the end, whatever that might entail.
“My mom is a pillar of strength,” she added. “She is going to continue to love dad and support dad and be his rock and his caregiver and the love of his life, no matter what.”
Friends, too, have been devastated by the news and have rallied.
Pat Golden of Gilroy volunteers at St. Louise Regional Hospital where Jeanne works as an administrative assistant.
She recalled first hearing that Gerry was retiring as Mr. Garlic, then almost in the same breath, Jeanne told her the diagnosis.
“I could see the tears welling up and she just blurted it out, ‘He has Alzheimer’s,’ and I just had to grab her and we just both stood there and cried in the middle of the hallway.”
Golden knew before the Foisys’ revelation the devastation of the disease. Her beloved sister, Shirley, 82, deteriorated so quickly after the same diagnosis that she was placed in a care home in Saratoga, where Golden visits the older kid sister who often doesn’t know her.
“I fought it, I wanted to come and stay with her and they all said no, it’s too much for you.”
Although present physically and in otherwise good health, “She is gone,” Golden said. “It’s futile, there is nothing we can do about it.”
That hit home when, at a recent gathering, Golden was identified as the new matriarch of the family, a title she wants no part of because of what it means.
Divorced and with no children of her own, Golden feels completely alone now much of the time and knows the sister she loved and cherished, along with memoires only they shared, is no longer present.
She reads all she can about the disease, advocates for more research and has shared her knowledge with the Foisys.
And she knows she has an ally in Jeanne when it comes to speaking out about the illness, sharing information and helping others.
“She is not shy about it,” Golden said of Jeanne. “Some people are ashamed, but this is what I want people to know: do not try to hide your loved ones with Alzheimer’s, they need the love.”
Gerry and Jeanne know they have tough decisions to make in the near future but some have already been made.
They had resisted a daughter’s suggestion that they all move into a “generational house” to be together for the coming health challenges, so that Gerry would have more caretakers and more stimulation, including from grandchildren, to keep his brain as active as possible for as long as possible.
But they have since decided to sell their South San Jose home and move in with family, perhaps into Gerry’s mother’s home nearby, which was vacated when she moved to a care facility.
The decision to retire as Mr. Garlic, however, was not driven by the disease; after 29 years, it was simply time to step aside, Gerry said.
At last weekend’s 38th garlic festival, he handed the bulb-baton to his son, Carl. The costume will have to be lengthened by a few inches, Gerry quipped.
As part of their thank-you for representing the festival for nearly three decades, friends had special T-shirts made for Gerry, with a cute phrase on the back. Now, it’s meaning has become especially poignant.
It reads, “It’s been a stinking good time.”
