Grandchildren

I'll never forget the moment when I realized my grandmother no longer knew who I was. It was a beautiful day in March. I was proudly showing my Grandmother my report card. Suddenly she turned to me and asked: "Excuse me, where is your family?" I looked at her, not quite believing what I had heard. "You are my family," I said. "You’re my Grandmother. You're right here." For every child of a parent or grandparent with Alzheimer's, that reality is a devastating one.

Do you know what your grandfather looked like as a young man? Would you like to read – in his own words- about the smell of the apple orchard where he met your grandmother? What he felt when he first saw her, the color of her eyes, where they went on their first date? How about his long dangerous voyage from his homeland – how he felt when he stood on the deck of the ship and saw America for the first time? These are the details that slip through our fingers as history is passed from one generation to the next.

But not anymore.

My First memory of Alzheimer's disease is quite poignant and left an indelible mark in my mind as a child. We lived in California and our family traveled to Iowa for a family reunion. The main hallmark of this event was to visit my maternal great -grandmother for the first and last time. I had never met her, but I remember my mother looking forward to seeing her grandmother whom she had fond memories of. Mind you, this was not a visit, but a last farewell to a woman who meant a great deal to the family.

"Plyometrics means jump training, we're talking lateral movement, forward movement, back and forward, up and down, all around, burning calories... this is x city." Where?

"Get your bucket ready..." What? What's the bucket for?

"Tip of the day, think like a cat. I want you to land softly." Mmm, okay yes, like a cat. Oh yea, I'm feeling this. I leap gently off my right foot and land softly on my left. And he said I'd need a bucket.

5 minutes later:
Wait, where'd this sweat come from?

My name is Tracey Crosby. Let me tell you about this disease and how it has affected me. My grandma was my world from the time I was 2 until this disease took her from me. I was her 3 grandchild ( 4 in total). All the other kids where my grandpa's buddies, but where ever grandma was found I was with her. We spent many summers going to garage sales, fishing, cooking the fish, mowing the yard, watching Wheel of Fortune, doing cross-word puzzles and attending church every Wed. night, Sunday morning and Sunday night.

The Ending Of Alzheimer’s Starts With You

You can’t go a few days without reading something in the news about Alzheimer’s.

This photo was taken the last time I remember seeing Grandma Sylvia smile. Alzheimer’s had already set in – she came to our engagement party in a hired ambulance and wasn’t sure why she was there. For the five years thereafter we only saw her in bed, where she withered away until her death. Sylvia suspected she was going to get Alzheimer’s. She saw what happened to her own mother (though it wasn’t diagnosed as Alzheimer’s back then), bought long term health insurance, downsized early and gave her children specific instructions to always keep her at home.

My maternal grandmother, an ordained minister in the Congregational Church, died of Alzheimer's in 1976. She was 77 when she died. My father died of Alzheimer's in 2010. He was 85. This picture is of my dad with my daughters in March 2010. He died from the complications of Alzheimer's on October 31, 2010. He was a physician, a passionate supporter of opera, sang in the choir, read voraciously, loved telling stories, gardening, eating, singing, dancing, scuba diving, movies, and traveling.