Stay Strong

September 06, 2015

Two people sit across the table from each other. They are eating chopped food with their hands because they are unable to use their fork quite right. They indulge in a brownie. I wipe the crumbs from their faces. They look at each other with fascination.

One has hope. The other has fear.

One is 3 and the other is 82.

The 82 year old is my grandmother who is steadily declining. Some doctors call it Lewy Body Dementia; others call it Alzheimer’s Disease. Whatever this horrible disease is, it has robbed my grandma of her personality, cognition, and language. “I just want my grandma back,” I sob to my mom. I don’t even recognize this person in front of me.

My grandma is the strongest person I know. She made it through an abusive mother, watched her husband slowly lose the battle to cancer, and lost her son in a car accident. She battled all of this, but lived her life anyway. She bowled, golfed, and swam. She knew how precious life was so she never let a moment go wasted.

When I got a summer internship at the Palm Beach Zoo in 2010, I decided I was going to live with her. Not just because it was free housing and food, but also because she is awesome. I loved being with her. She lived by herself so why not keep her company. We ate dinner together every night. She cooked for me 5 times a week and we went to our favorite places the other 2 nights. Every night after dinner, we would sit on the couch and just talk. This was before smart phones, so no distractions just good ol face-to-face communication. I would listen intently for hours as she told me stories.

Four years later, she left her home in Florida and moved into an assisted living facility in Virginia near my parents. The night we moved her in, I stayed there for three hours because I couldn’t let her go. She opened up to me about feeling out of control about her brain and not being able to do the things she used to be able to do. I opened up to her about my stuttering and also feeling out of control. She ended with, “Never let someone tell you that you can’t do something. You can do it. You are special and I am so proud of you.” We both started to cry and she reached for my hand.

I look at the 3 year old. There’s a sparkle in her eye filled with curiosity and wonder. Her journey is just beginning and the opportunities are endless. They say to her, “You have your whole life in front of you.”

But what happens when you have your whole life behind you? My eyes shift to the 82 year old. The sparkle that was once in her eyes is glossed over by a blank stare filled with confusion, loneliness, and sadness. Her journey is ending. But as she looks back into her life, despite tremendous adversity and hardship, she can smile for she has lived.

I drop her off at her home after a day spent together. I hold her hand once more and with a tear in my eye and an ache in my heart, I whisper, “Stay strong, grandma. Stay strong.”

May we all have the courage, no matter what life throws at us, to keep the memories close to our heart and stay strong.