photo by Josh Premako
With this being the February/March issue of élite, it’s only fitting our readers be bombarded with love story after love story…after love story. Valentine’s Day is supposed to be the time of year we devote to demonstrating our affection to the ones we love and articulating our appreciation in the form of candy, cards, flowers, and food. For Bob and Jody Merriman, their love can’t be encapsulated by a single day of the year. Their requited connection is ongoing and displayed in their daily actions and unrelenting devotion to each other.
He was the youngest of three children from Wisconsin. She grew up in the suburbs of Granada Hills. He went to Bishop Alemany and she graduated from Culver City High School. They don’t share the same traditional, storybook tale of growing up together and starting a family. In fact, Bob and Jodie’s love story is far from ordinary, but their commitment is just as strong as any other.
The two of them met in the mid-1970’s, knowing each other only as distant neighbors in the hills of Canyon Country. They started out as the best of friends, hanging around and sharing casual conversation about how their days were going and the kinds of things they were dealing with in their lives.
Eventually, they fell in love and, in April of 1990, Bob proposed to Jodie over dinner. In a moment of complete vulnerability, he explained to her that he enjoyed spending a lot of time with her and, to him, they were a perfect match for each other. He followed this by explaining his desire of wanting to spend the rest of life together with only her. The two got married and everything was swell for years after the engagement. They didn’t live an extravagant life, but the Merriman’s always found time to enjoy the little things and spend quality time doing activities they loved together.
Then, about six or seven years ago, Jody was diagnosed with CADASIL (cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy). When asked on how he reacted to the initial signs of the genetic disorder, Bob simply replied, “It was a long time getting there. I remember Jody was taking Robbie to school one morning and she proceeded through an intersection while the traffic light was red. She got t-boned by the lady in the other car and when she got to the hospital, she couldn’t remember anything about the accident.” Together, Bob and Jody were in and out of hospitals, getting tests and trying to find an explanation to the problem. “Initially, one doctor diagnosed it as seizure disorder, then we went to Kaiser and after many tests, they discovered it wasn’t and suspected primary progressive multiple sclerosis. She had some symptoms, but nothing really pronounced. One day, we got a call and somebody noticed an anomaly in her genes and the genealogists diagnosed her with CADASIL – a genetic disorder with similarities to Alzheimer’s disease.”
When asked about how CADASIL affected their relationship and their marriage, Bob, without hesitation, answered, “She’s completely dependent and it’s fine with me because I know she’d do the same for me if the situation was reversed. Jody has a sense of cognitive dissonance. Her thought process is working, but she just can’t express herself and it’s very frustrating.” Bob then recalled, “When I pick her up from the Senior Center after work and she sees me coming down the hall, she lights up like a Christmas tree. I remember one time, we were in an embrace and she looked up into my eyes and asked, ‘What’s happening to me?’ I served in Vietnam from ’66 to ’68, but hearing this just ripped my guts out.”
The Merrimans say this experience brought them closer together and while they were best friends long before this happened, their love continues to grow. Bob concluded that Jodie’s condition has been experiencing a plateau effect and there’s no way to tell if she will get worse or how fast it’ll happen. He simply stated, “We just take life as it comes…on a day-to-day basis.”
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