An Open Letter to Dementia

And all the other memory mutilators under the Alzheimers umbrella

The longest goodbye you’ll ever say is to someone you love with memory loss. You’ll attend a thousand funerals of the person they used to be long before any ashes are spread. I’ve watched some version of Alzheimer's or dementia rip memories and lucidity from all 4 of my grandparents now. It’s become my biggest fear that I’ll become doomed to it myself and subject my husband and children to the pain on this side of this cruel disease. Perhaps the most gutting part of memory loss diseases is that there is no fight to be had. There’s no cure, no remission & no survivors. I know hammering my rage & heartbreak into this keyboard won’t fix my only remaining grandma, I guess I’m just hoping to get a little of it out of my head and out of my heart.

So.

Dear Dementia,

Your cruelty is unmatched. I don’t understand taking the memories from elderly people with slowing & failing bodies. Memories are the only things they have left. You’re not just eating through neural connections and brain tissue. You’re pillaging fishing trips, sewing lessons and recipes handed down from sun-spotted to little hands. You’re taking first dances and last kisses. You steal dignity and long held virtues from even the most stoic in your path. You burn like an inferno through decades of love & care with no regard for what you set ablaze. Everyone in your general vicinity is left fighting to breathe through acrid bitter air, eyes blurred trying to see through the smoky haze to what used to be there. You take and you take and you take until there’s nothing left but burnt foundation. The ghost of the structure still stands, but the beauty embedded in every room, on every floor is left in shambles.

Not only do you strip your victims of their cache of joys & treasures, you seem to take great pleasure in warping them into unrecognizable shadow versions of their former selves. It seems like, as you suck up the joy they fight to hold onto you seep your own bitter poison into every corner you can sneak it into slowly choking your prey from within. I have no love lost for your cruel game.

But you can’t take everything.

She can’t remember anymore, but I can. I’ll remember her teaching me how to tie flies & cast a line as the sun came up over willows lining a creek bed tucked between two cabins at 10,000 feet. I’ll remember learning to make cookies at a chipped old countertop that I could hardly see over and the way she laughed when I accidentally dropped eggs on the patterned linoleum floor she said “that is not what beat the eggs means Lauren.” I’ll remember the way she was able to coax absolutely anything to grow in her garden. I’ll remember that she taught me how to woodwork. I’ll remember that she kicked cancer’s ass multiple times. I’ll remember that she loved to read and write poetry, even if I didn’t get her particular brand of verses. I’ll remember packing picnics into red paisley handkerchiefs tied to sticks and taking hikes both long & short to go eat quietly together in nature. I’ll remember the way her house smelled on Thanksgiving. I’ll remember getting dressed up to go to plays and appreciate art. I’ll remember that she was the last of her kind.

You can’t have all of her. Because she will live on right here with me. I’ll carry her love for southwestern decor & turquoise jewelry. She will be in every sewing pattern I ever use, or likely modify because neither one of us can stand to be told what to do. She will live on in every flower arrangement I ever see. She will be folded into every recipe of every meal I ever deliver to someone who is sick or grieving. I’ll carry her love for writing and creating. I will even carry her occasional viper tongue, because it's embedded in me as deeply as in her. You can’t take it all from her, because a lot of it she’s given to me.

I hope by the time I reach the age that you seem to like to strike that there is some sort of cure or prevention that can actually withstand your onslaught. But since there’s nothing like that yet and you’re hard at work on my Gram I’ll defy you the only way I can. I’ll grit my teeth and hold onto what she now cannot and I'll do it with love. You might take her memories, but you’ll never take the love that was woven into every fleeting scene. That you can’t have, not even if you come for me someday.

So just know that even as you dim the lights on all her memories you’ll never be able to snuff her all the way out. I’ll carry her like a lantern to light the rest of my path even after she’s gone.

With All Due Disrespect,

The Granddaughter of a Dementia Patient