Christmas Eve forgotten

I close my eyes and remember everything. Turning sixteen and nineteen and twenty-three. My first job and my first apartment on East 22nd street and who broke my heart and all of my friends I laughed and cried with and all of the days and nights and years before today. And I open my eyes and I am 33, the same age my father was when he died with the same number of children he had.  

All of these things, my memories, are an intangible part of me. And I think about my rapidly disappearing grandmother and wonder what she still remembers. I wonder what her mind is like. I imagine it to be dark hallways that lead to even darker rooms, walking slowly around a house but never finding the door to the room you wish to enter. She is forgetting more and more it seems. The dots have almost completely stopped connecting.

I think one of the more difficult aspects of Alzheimer's is the reality that it doesn't get better. Not the point that she is at. No amount of medication or good diet or exercise or yoga (as if she'd ever do that!) will improve her current state. I am sadly aware that my visits are forgotten shortly after I leave. I brought two of my children and my mother to see her on Christmas Eve. She opened the gifts we brought and ate Christmas cookies and spoke to my brother on the phone for his birthday and yet none of it clicked for her. There was no recognition of it being Christmas. 

Two days later my uncle visited and mentioned my visit on Christmas eve. She was adamant that no one had been to see her. I felt sad and also thankful that my kids had gotten another visit with her while she still knows who we are, even if she later forgets, they will remember.