Personal Narrative Essay: Alzheimer 's Disease With My Grandmother

“Remember? The small man with pointy ears. What’s his name?” She struggles for a long moment, eyes scanning the unobtainable word on the plastic, holiday tablecloth. “Eh-el-fuh,” she sounds out, syllables unsteadily tripping over themselves. In front of me sits my grandmother, a woman who once devoured the nuances of Shakespeare’s greatest works. She wrestles with the word, eventually announcing “Elf!”. Pride beams from her wrinkled eyes as I smile softly and clear her plate, reminiscing on hundreds of identical past conversations. 

Alzheimer’s disease knows no mercy, no discrimination, and no recovery. It chose my grandmother, a retired high school english teacher with a soft spot for basset hounds, large novels, and simple joys. As a child, I knew only of her unconditional love, love in the form of Werther’s caramel candies and heavy books of fairy tales, ones I couldn’t wait to open after a long day of studying or a late night dance rehearsal. That love blossomed as I grew older and I found a kindred spirit in her, a “Greatest Generation” survivor, risky adventurer, and wise counselor. 

My grandmother recognized that each word she spoke held the power to shape the person I would become, but even for the strongest, words become heavy sometimes. She held me as the word “parents” became singular, the word “home” unfamiliar except in her arms. Her front office became my bedroom as I left my old life behind, and her new, constant presence reassured me. She was my rock, her perpetual kindness a welcome refuge from my crumbling world. The early-stage diagnosis was a sucker punch—as if in a dream, I woke up one morning and our roles became reversed. In the beginning, the changes were subtle, little misplacements of trinkets and grocery lists. More colorful sticky notes in her crowded, Ticonderoga writing. I was 13 when she turned down a wrong-way street and into oncoming traffic, my mother revoking her license shortly thereafter. 

Now, four years later, my identity has become blurred in her mind beyond even my own recognition. For her, each day is a blank canvas, and I serve to paint the role of an old childhood friend, a maid, a former principal. The image of the first time my name created no spark of memory in her mind, when she looked up with sweet eyes and told me the combination of letters was pretty, is something that still makes me shudder from the pain I know she never meant to cause. I recognized at that moment just how much I had taken for granted, how valuable our name is on someone’s lips before it is lost. Words leave her often now, a clock becoming a number-pointer, the letters to form blanket getting stuck between her mind and her voice, and thus, she communicates in nonverbals.

I had to learn that new language whilst taking on my own grief—the angle of a raised eyebrow at one point, meant only that; today, it serves as the basis of our shared vocabulary. As her range of verbal expression and physical motion becomes increasingly limited, I find myself focusing deeper on the connection we share. Paying close attention to the small things required of being a full-time caretaker has become second nature. Making the sacrifice to take fewer classes my junior year in order to be home sooner to take care of her. Managing my time between dance, schoolwork, my students, and her needs. Being constantly cautious of little hazards, how the things I say will make her feel even if she can’t respond to them. Each small nuance of our interactions has helped me in every aspect of the other relationships in my life. Although I take great care to love each person I come across, the capacity and attention of that love has expanded to fill many missing places in my life. 

As my grandmother is lost to the unending pain that is Alzheimer’s, that is what holds us together. Recognizing that the most grief-filled relationship I’ve ever known affects each second of my interactions throughout the day has been a beautiful, albeit unbearable, experience. Daily, it is all I can do just to take every piece of a moment, tie it together in a memory, to savor every drop of life and remember.