Charmanda!

Alzheimer’s.

When I hear that word I feel a sense of regret and a twinge of fear. The pain and anger that must be felt to be robbed of your memory. To be robbed of your family, of faces and places.

I never really had to fear that idea until earlier this year.

My grandmother was diagnosed with dementia, in the following months it has progressed aggressively. According to the world she should be in her final stages, just waiting for an illness to grab hold of her and take her from us.

I have never been so scared of something so much as I am afraid of this disease.

But I have been lucky. As she remember’s me every time I see her. She has been calm and understanding when I see her, she looks over photo’s with me and laughs. We talk about our problems, our treatments, our memories.

She remember’s me, and in that sentiment I am the luckiest person in the whole family.

She is forgetting her own husband, she is forgetting her grandchildren, her great grandchildren. But every time she sees me she just smiles and says, “Oh there you are Amanda.”

I should be thrilled, excited somehow that out of everyone she remembered ME. But I don’t. I feel only sadness knowing that she forget’s my grandfather. That she forgets over 50 years of marriage. 

That she forget’s that my sister had 5 kids. That she mistakes my sister for my mother on occasion now.

That she wakes up sometimes screaming because she doesn’t know where she is.

All these things crush me more than a small victory would bring me up. 

I don’t know what else to think in this time, but to keep moving forward. To try and spend as much time with her as I can. To remember her as the woman who raised us with hope in our hearts, and kindness in our eyes. A woman who taught me that life was worth living more than once.

Who made me promise that I would live on. That I wouldn’t allow sadness to consume me permanently.

No matter what happens, no matter how lost I feel. I will always look back to see that woman there.