On the recordJuly 30, 2024
thanks to Senator Collins for her longtime leadership on this issue. There is no more important issue in our country than the scourge of Alzheimer's. My mother, like Senator Collins's father, succumbed to Alzheimer's. But today, there are very few families in our whole country that do not have a similar story, some relative who has had Alzheimer's. My mother was diagnosed, and she was a brilliant woman. She was president of her senior class in high school. But her mother died--my grandmother--when my mother was 17. She had to be the mother and raise her three younger sisters so she never got to go to college. She ultimately finished raising the first family. Then, at 37, she married my father who was a milkman and then had me at 39 and my two brothers at age 40 and then she raised us. Now, my mother was a completely brilliant woman. She could do calculus for fun at the table, even though she never had calculus in school. And my father used to say, after my mother contracted Alzheimer's, your mother was a brilliant woman. It was an honor that your mother married me. Your mother is never stepping foot in a nursing home. No one is touching your mother at 2 a.m. in the morning. It was an honor that she married me. And so at age 80, 82, 84, 86, 88, 90, my father kept my mother in our living room. That is my story. That is my family's story. That is Senator Collins's story. That is the story of millions of families in our country.…
