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Alzheimer’s steals father, but memories live on for daughter
(QUEEN CITY NEWS) — Everywhere you look in Ashley Carlucci’s apartment, there are reminders of her dad – handwritten notes, small mementos, and keepsakes from the life they built together.
“This is just some of his handwriting,” Ashley said, holding a note she saved from him, before picking up the card that was handed out at his funeral.
“This is the house we put on the back of it — the one he built because he loved that house.”
Growing up, Ashley and her dad, James, were inseparable. “I was his shadow,” Ashley said. “Everywhere he was, I was there.”
James worked nights as an electrician at a nuclear power plant. He was quiet and strong, the kind of dad who didn’t always say I love you but had his own way of showing it.
“We did this thing where we’d just bump foreheads,” Ashley said with a smile. “That was our ‘I love you.’”
James was the smartest person she knew, building their family home himself, often working through freezing New York winters. “I remember being in my snow pants, heating hot dogs over the fire while we worked,” Ashley said. “Those were good memories.”
But years later, her “Superman” began to change.
At first, the signs were small, such as moments of frustration that seemed out of character.
“He would get angry over little things,” Ashley said. “And we didn’t know why.”
But then his memory began to slip. The family thought it might be related to a neurological Lyme disease he’d contracted from a tick bite, but as time went on, the symptoms became harder to ignore. The lapses in memory eventually led to James being let go from his job.
“I remember hearing my mom cry and my dad comforting her,” Ashley said. “I think it was because the life they planned wasn’t going to map out.”
After losing his job, James fell into depression, though Ashley and her siblings were shielded from most of it.
“I don’t think I really realized what was going on,” Ashley said. “They did a good job making sure we had what we needed. I still did dance, ski club — they never wanted us to know.”
However, that changed one day after a crew race. Ashley was a teenager, waiting for her dad to pick her up.
“I saw his legs under the truck bed, and then he just fell,” she said. “He started to have four grand mal seizures. He went unconscious right in front of me.”
Frozen in fear, she remembers a bystander stepping in to call 911.
“That’s when it hit me — this isn’t typical,” Ashley said. “He’s really sick.”
Not long after, her father was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Ashley was just 15 years old — suddenly thrust into a role no teenager expects: caregiver.
“No one prepares you for what that looks like,” Ashley said. “What that is, or what it entails.”
Through high school and college, she took on more responsibility as her father’s condition worsened — helping him eat, bathe, and drink.
“There’s no handbook for that,” Ashley said. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
But the hardest moment came when her parents had to move out of the home her dad had built. “One day he woke up and didn’t know where he was,” Ashley said. “He couldn’t talk.”
James was hospitalized and eventually moved to a nursing home. Two weeks later, he passed away.
“I think the hardest part has been going through all of these life events without him,” Ashley said. “And hoping I’m making him proud.”
It was always his dream to move to the Carolinas — and that’s where Ashley lives today. When she needs comfort, she still talks to him.
“I’m by the lake,” she said, reading from one of her letters to him. “You loved lakes and bodies of water. I miss you more than I can put into words.”
Her Superman may be gone — but he’s still everywhere she goes.
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