What do you do when your memories start to slip away? How do you keep yourself grounded in reality when it becomes harder and harder to remember the date? How do you care for someone that you've grown up with who no longer remembers your name? These are some of the questions that my family was forced to deal with when my Grandma contracted Alzheimer's. The disease is subtle at first and with my Grandpa around it was easy to mis the little warning signs. It wasn't until after Grandpa passed and Grandma moved in with us that we really discovered how badly things had gotten. Alzheimer's is all about preventative care. Once we realized what was going on, it was too late for most of the treatments. But we did our best. Grandma was surrounded with a loving family and we cared for her with the dignity that she deserved.
The house was a little more cramped with her living there. We lived in a modest comfortable three bedroom suburban house on a quiet street. All three bedrooms were on the second floor. Mom and Dad had the master bedroom. My older brother and I both had our own rooms. Since Grandma had trouble with too many stairs we made up the den on the main floor into another bedroom for her. It was close to the bathroom and the kitchen and she settled in nicely.
It was funny though. Some days she seemed like nothing had changed. She would be in full control of her memory and seemed sharp as a tack. Those were the days that led you to have false hope that maybe she wasn't as far along as the doctors said. Maybe she was getting better. But then there were other days when she hardly knew where she was. She would forget our names. She often forgot that Grandpa had passed and she would wander around calling his name or asking us if we had seen him. Sometimes she would even revert back to another decade, thinking that she and Grandpa were on their honeymoon or even still dating. The books we read told us to go along with it and not to shatter the illusion. She would eventually remember and she seemed to handle it better if she remembered on her own rather than us forcing the truth on her.
Other than her mind, she was in excellent condition for being in her late seventies. She walked every day and was in great shape. Her heart, lungs, and bones were all healthy. She had good muscle tone and ate healthy foods. No high blood pressure, or cholesterol issues. It was just her mind that slipped from time to time. It was also hard to predict. Some days she would go in and out of her confused periods. Other times she would have weeks without an episode. We stayed vigilant and took care of her the best we could.
The summer I turned eighteen we had a scare that honestly left me a little unsettled. Grandma was having an episode of confusion, walking around the house and calling for Walter, my Grandpa. She insisted that they had just been talking and he got up to get them some iced teas. With heavy hearts, my parents tried to downplay the episode, to distract her with other things in hopes that she would come back around to herself. It wasn't working. I heard a crash and ran down the stairs. Grandma had knocked a stack of dishes on the cupboard and there were shards of broken glass all over the floor. She was crying as my mom held her back from walking into the shards and getting cut to pieces.
As I walked into the room, Grandma saw me, and started shouting "Walter there you are!" My mom let go of her and she fell into my arms. I barely had time to catch her and hold her up. She was holding onto be and kept repeating the name Walter. As I held her in my arms, supporting her weight, my mom and dad both just shrugged and seemed to tell me to go with it. It was clear that for whatever reason, she thought I was her husband. The episode lasted another 30 minutes before she was content enough to go back to bed. Even then, I had to sit with her on the side of her bed, gently stroking her hair until she fell asleep. It scared me and showed me how much power the human mind could give or take away from a person.
Luckily for us, after that, things seemed to get better for a season. She had a few minor episodes that summer, but nothing close to the confusion of that night. Slowly the memories of her "bad days" seemed to fade and we once again got up our hopes that she had turned a corner and might be getting a little more stable, if not completely better. That is where things stood in the fall when my older brother was set to go to college. My parents had both wanted to be with him for the opening weekend and help get him settled into his housing and classes. Unfortunately, the college was a ten hour drive away. They had gone back and forth about which of them would end up accompanying him. With driving, they would be gone four at least five days and they didn't want to leave Grandma alone.
I volunteers to take the week off work so that I could be at the house 24/7 and keep an eye on her. I was eighteen years old and capable of handling the necessary day-to-day things. I was a little unsure what I would do if she had another episode, but it had been months since anything remotely bad had come up. I felt good enough with my chances. My parents agreed. I think they saw it more as busy work. A way to keep me form having any parties or goofing off while they were gone. Finally the day came and with many hugs we said goodbye. I watched them drive away and settled in for five days of Grandma sitting. It wouldn't take up all my time. In fact I had a lot of other things I needed to do.
The first day passed without incident. I hung around the house, working on a paper for my college prep course, making Grandma and myself dinner, and cleaning things up. That night we sat together on the couch and watched an old war movie and she told me stories about Grandpa and her friends from back in the day. She seemed to be completely clear headed and I didn't have a second thought as I said good night to her at 8pm and she headed for bed. I stayed up watching TV for another couple hours by myself. It was a little after 10pm when I heard some noises from her room. I muted the TV, walked over, and pressed my ear to the door. After a moment I was sure that what I heard was Grandma softly crying. I stood still for a moment not knowing what to do, then gently pushed the door open and stepped into her room.
She was laying on her side on the bed facing away from me and I could now hear her crying very clearly as well as seeing her body shaking. I stepped over to the bed and sat down on the edge. I put my hand on her shoulder and tried to softly shake her awake.
"Grandma, it's ok. It's ok. I'm here." I said, still lightly shaking her shoulder. She abruptly stopped crying and turned to face me. Her eyes were wet, full of tears as she looked up at me.
"Oh, Walter, I had a bad dream again." She said and then started crying again. I leaned in and put my arms around her. I knew better than to try to correct her about her dead husband, but tried to offer what comfort I could.
"It's ok, Betty, It was just a dream. You're ok. Go back to sleep" I said, and then tried rolling her back over. She rolled over, but I could see her still shaking and starting to cry again. I decided that I would have to sit in here with her until she fell back asleep. I turned and laid back on the the bed next to her and she shifted to put her head on my shoulder. I was a tight fit, so I reached my arm around her and she lay her head on my arm, facing me. Instantly the crying and shaking subsided and her breathing calmed down. I just lay there quietly, thinking of the time before when it had taken about a half hour for her to fall asleep. Sure enough after about twenty-five minutes, her breathing had become slower and more regular. I heard the beginnings of a snore and very carefully tried to extricate my arm from under her head.
Making as little noise as I could, I stood up from the bed, then readjusted her blanket over her and tip-toed out of the room on silent feet. I closed the door behind me and breathed a sigh of relief. It was getting late and I was getting tired, so I walked around the house, shutting lights off then made my way up the stairs to my bed. I brushed my teeth, then stripped off my pants and t-shirt in order to sleep in my boxers as I usually did. I set my alarm on my phone for the next morning, plugged it in, then hit the pillow and was out in minutes.
I woke with a start some time later. I couldn't say what had woken me up, but I had the vague sense that I had heard a sound. I sat in the dark for a long moment listening. When I didn't hear anything, I reached over and retrieved my phone to see what time it was. It was 3:30am. I turned back over and readjusted my pillow, preparing to drift back to sleep when I heard the sound again. I sat up and strained my ears. I heard it again. Someone was coming up the stairs. Of course, the only person it could be was my Grandma, but I still sat silently listening. After a few minutes I saw the door to my room push open and Grandma standing there in the doorway. She didn't say anything, just stood there. She was so still. I wondered if she was sleep walking or having another episode. She didn't seem to be upset, but still. I wasn't sure if I should say anything, so I just waited.
Then all at once she turned and looked back the way she had come. I thought she was going to leave, but then she turned back around and stepped into my room, closing the door silently behind her. I was still sitting up in the bed and watching as she seemingly glided over to me across the floor. She was wearing a sleeveless, white silk nightgown that fell to her thighs. She was pale and thin. Only about 5ft 6" and maybe 120lbs. She was tone for a woman in her seventies, with small sagging breasts and a flat stomach. She had grayish, white hair that was short, not even to her chin, and piercing ice blue eyes. She stood at the side of my bed and looked down at me, but her gaze was vacant, like she was looking right through me. At this point I decided to take my chances and try to break her out of her episode.
