Loving Someone with Alzheimer's

When I was tweleve, I began the long and emotionally traumatizing journey of caring for my maternal grandmother. She had Alzheimer's, and soon required 24 hour care. From the time I was twelve, to the time I was fifteen, I helped to care for her. For three long years I endured adult temper tantrums, tears, cleaning up her messes, and helping her with some of the simplest tasks.

I spent more nights than I can remember crying because she couldn't remember my name, didn't act like she loves me, and gave my mother nothing but hatred. She moved to a permenant care facility in Salt Lake City, Utah shortly after I started high school, and remained their until her unexpected death in April of 2014.

I harbored a lot of guilt after her death. Maybe if I had been nicer to her, if I had had more patience, or if I had taken care of her more, she would have been a bit better. I know that my mother shares a lot of the same guilt times 100. I am having to realize that what happened to her is through no fault of my own or my mothers. I try to see it from a religious stand point and try to see it as another trial in my life that God has sent me. Sometimes that is harder than others.

I miss my grandmother every single day. I miss going to the park with her, going for rainbow sherbet ice cream, or walking to the library. I miss the way she always smelled like vanillia lotion, and would push me on the swing. I miss her telling me about the world while I listened in wonder. I miss the sleepover's we would have and the Harry Potter movie marathon's we used to sit through. But I know, deep in my heart that those memories are what got me through my struggle with her. I firmly believe that without the hope that the person who used to do all those things with me was still somewhere in my grandmother, I wouldn't have made it through.

I have made it through milestones I always thought she would be alive to see. I got into the concert orchestra with my local youth symphony after years of trying. I turned sixteen. I have fallen in love, had my heart broken, and broken a few hearts of my own. I have had Christmas's, Thanksgiving's, Easter's, and birthday's without her. Now, I am preparing to celebrate my eighteenth birthday, graduate from high school, and get accepted to college. I know that she will never see me fall in love for real this time, get engaged, get married, have children, buy a home, or graduate from college.

Now, I see people with their grandparents, and it breaks my heart. I have no grandparents left, and I don't get that special bond anymore. I watch as my friends complain about their grandparents visiting, and it breaks me. I want to yell and cry at them that I wold give anything for just five more minutes with my grandmother or grandfather's. I have a difficult time looking at elderly people, and can't even think about volunteering in the local Alzheimer's treatment center yet becuase, while it has been two years, I still feel the pain of my loss, and can't be around people like that because of the memories it dredges up.

I see my parents, and the injustice with them. Both of my parents are orphans now. I see wedding pictures on Pinterest where there are three generations of women showing off their engagement and wedding rings, and I know that I will never get that. It kills me to think that there is so little left of my family, but I also have to see it from my religious view. We will all be together again someday. Even though I wish today was that day, I hold out for when I will get to see my beloved grandmother again.

I still love my grandmother. Even when she was at her worst, I loved her with all my heart. Nothing she did ever changed that. I believe that my experience with her has made me who I am today. I still hold on to a lot of that bitter person who sat there and cried "why me" when things got too hard, but I have my strength, my knowledge, my confidence, and my capabilities as well. Now, I try to live my life in a way that would make her proud. SHe can't say it to me anymore, but there are times when I can still feel her love and affection even though she has been dead for nearly two years now.

Nothing will ever bring my grandmother back, but how I choose to remember her is all that matters now. Through my religious beliefs, I know that I will see her again someday, and she will remember me, and love me even though she couldn't always do that while she was alive.

I love you grandma. Forever and always.

Love,

Lola