They met on the dance floor of a Bolivian bar: a Brooklyn boy named Bill and the girl soon to be known as Marina Brown, twirling together toward a first child and a wedding blessed by the U.S. Peace Corps. Later, Bill Brown became a production man, holding factory management jobs that took their growing family from Mexico to Kuala Lumpur. They raised four children. Marina got a master’s in social work, aiding Miami’s troubled youths. Growing older, the Browns settled in Hawaii but bought another home in Portland, where two of their kids had taken root.
These are the memories. What happened next no one foresaw. Little by little, Marina began to change. She grew dizzy, fainted, got tingles in her arms. Her heart sometimes raced. Doctors doctored. “The medical workup was always negative,” says her son Nick. “There was nothing they could find.”
The ailment ran deep. Marina cried often—sudden outbursts before returning to normal. She asked anxiously about her grandchildren and grew agitated, despondent, paranoid, impulsive. As a passenger in a moving car, she grabbed the steering wheel. She tried to run from the house—and, later, the hospital. She was pushing 83, and could seem forgetful, but tests ruled out dementia. For long periods, she barely talked at all…