US meets UK

My maternal grandmother has been in a steady decline for a few years now. I can still remember sitting in their house near Annapolis, my grandmother in her blue chair and her struggle to remember the word “button”. She was pointing to her sweater, saying “this, oh this… oh dear… this?”. Then I began to worry.

I worried as they moved to their retirement community (which, really was a great move for them), I worried as my grandmother lost more and more of her ability to communicate. I worried as I became “a nice lady” and she no longer knew me as her granddaughter. I worried as my mother, and her sisters also became known to her as “nice young ladies” but most of all I worried for the day when my grandfather would become “a nice old man” to her.

My grandparents have been together since high school, through WWII and my grandfather’s service, through moving all over the country raising four children. Even through settling down into retirement and the enjoyment of the family that they created and its growing members.

Always, they have loved and treated each other with great respect and kindness. All in the family strive to emulate their relationship, their kindness and their giving. My grandparents have each been each other’s world for so long that I have been terrified what will happen to their orbit if one of them slips away. Years after the rest of us became nice people who visit her she was able to hold on to my grandfather, to know him, to at least have an emotional understanding if not a cognitive one. This past week my grandparents spent their last night together and my grandmother moved several buildings down into a full time care facility.

I took my nephew to see them, because on a very sad day, a very happy baby can bring most people joy. But it just about broke my heart in two as I watched my grandfather bring Sebastian (nephew) over to my grandmother – but she was in her own world at that moment and couldn’t interact with her husband or great grandson.

While I still have my grandmother in body, it feels like we’ve lost her spirit. I really hate myself for mentioning The Notebook, but you know that scene where you realize that they did in fact marry, but that she has no clue who her husband is? That movie came out right about the same time that she began to have difficulties and since then I’ve been dreading that moment for my grandparents. My grandmother has been slowly slipping out of our grasp for years, and it’s one of the most painful things I’ve witnessed.

Which is why, with my cousins, I’ll be walking in DC Walk to End Alzheimer’s. You might be shocked at this, because in general I eschew walks for diseases, because I feel that directly donating to research or an organization that can spend the dollars directly rather than on a costly walk is better. But I get it now, people aren’t just walking/running/whatever-ing for a cure they do it for the solidarity, for the fellowship.

Please support my cousins and I, because memories are invaluable and time spent with loved ones is never time wasted.