Forget Me Not: A Short Story of Alzheimer's

At the first Alzheimer's Association Great Minds meeting, I learned that Chicken Soup for the Soul is publishing a book about living with Alzheimer's and dementia. I knew right away I had to submit a story for it. Writing has long been my form of therapy, I've filled journals and felt so much better after putting pen to paper and getting whatever is in my heart and on my mind out.

There was a lot I wish I could have said, but I was limited to the 1200 word maximum. I plan on taking this short story and expanding it into a novel during National Novel Writing Month next month (aka NaNoWriMo, a challenge to write a 50,000-word novel during the month of November). I submitted this story tonight, and I should know by March whether or not it will be published in the Chicken Soup for the Soul collection.

***

"Forget Me Not" 

Nursing homes always seem to have an almost unnatural quiet about them. It must have something to do with the thick, plush carpet that hushes your footsteps, the quiet chatter of nurses, and the patients, clustered soundlessly in chairs in common rooms, or hidden behind the closed doors of their rooms.  Even a whisper seems too loud.

It is in this unnaturally quiet hallway that I wait, just outside Granny’s small apartment-style room, for my parents to finish up their goodbyes. The room was too crowded, so after hugging Granny goodbye, my face brushing her blue suit that she’s been wearing for the past several weeks since we can’t convince her to wear anything else, I lean against the wall, feet sinking into the plush carpet, and wait.

“And Angie, make sure to tell Courtney to come see me more often,” I hear Granny say.

My heart stops for a second and my stomach plummets. The moment I’ve been dreading, since Granny was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s several years before, has finally happened. She has forgotten that I was just there, that I had just spent an hour answering her repeated questions. The moments I spent with her weren’t enough for a memory to form. She had forgotten me.

I don’t hear Mom’s response. It’s all I can do to keep the tears from falling, to try and keep from sobbing as my heart breaks in two.

This is the beginning of the end, the long, slow decline into confusion and forgotten memories. While we could usually explain away the repeated questions, the mixing up of one grandchild with another, but it is impossible to deny a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s when Granny can’t remember spending an hour with me.

***

Dad punches in the code at the door to Monticello House. You have to put in a code to get in or out, so that patients can’t wander away. It is a depressingly necessary safety measure, but one that keeps my wandering Grandpa safely inside.

The lock clicks and Dad opens the door. I try to mentally prepare myself for this visit, clutching my senior pictures that I’ve brought for Grandpa’s room. Grandpa has gotten quieter in the last few visits, hardly talking to us at all and never initiating a conversation. He has started to become so different from the sociable, talkative, never-knew-a-stranger grandfather from my childhood that I have a hard time visiting with him. It hurts too much to see him quiet.

I follow Dad into Grandpa’s room. Grandpa is sitting in his chair, staring at, but not watching and comprehending, the evening news program that plays quietly on his TV. He looks up when we enter, but there isn’t much recognition in his eyes.

“Hi Grandpa,” I say, leaning down to hug him. He feels so small.

I hand him my framed senior pictures. “I brought some senior pictures for you!” I say, forcing some cheer into my voice.

Grandpa looks at the pictures and his brow furrows. He runs a finger across the frame, purses his lips. “That’s an awfully pretty girl. Do you know her?” he asks me.

I try to swallow the lump that has formed in my throat. “Yeah, Grandpa,” I say, trying to keep my voice from quivering and blinking quickly. If I blink fast enough, the tears that are quickly building won’t escape. “That’s me, Grandpa, Courtney.”

Grandpa looks at me, his brow still puckered in confusion. I can see how much he’s struggling, how hard he’s trying to place how he knows me. Every moment of his struggle twists my stomach and tugs at my heart.

“Your granddaughter,” I say, trying so hard to keep the hurt out of my voice.

“Oh,” Grandpa says, and looks back at the pictures. He can’t connect the dots. He knows my face, but he doesn’t remember me. All the memories of me, of spending the night at his and Grandma’s house, of trying to teach me how to cast with a Mickey Mouse fishing pole in the backyard, of trips to Gatlinburg and scrambling over rocks at the Chimney Tops picnic grounds, of him chasing after a younger me, vacuuming up the crumbs that spill from the cookies in my hands with his handheld Dirt Devil, of Christmases with presents wrapped with at least ten pieces of tape, are gone.

Dad reaches out and rubs my shoulder. “How about we put those pictures on your shelf?” he asks Grandpa, reaching over and taking the frame. He places it on the same shelf as the other family pictures, smiling faces that Grandpa looks at every day and most likely doesn’t recognize. He has already asked Dad once before who the lady with him in the picture is, pointing to my grandma, his wife of almost 52 years, that he no longer remembers.

“Doesn’t that look nice?” Dad asks.

Grandpa nods, his attention diverted back to the TV, which is now playing Wheel of Fortune. The multicolored wheel spins and blurs in the reflection on his glasses, reflecting the blurry haze of memories he can no longer navigate.

***

We’re crowded into Granny’s dim, small room. I’m sitting in between Mom, who is talking quietly to Aunt Becky, and my brother Josh, who is playing on his phone. My sister Brittany plays with Cali and Eli, our cousin Megan’s kids. Uncle Eddie, Aunt Linda, Dad, Uncle Bob, and Kari are grouped together on the other side of the room. We’re circled around Granny’s bed, biding our time as she spends what are surely her last hours sleeping.

Snow is falling lightly outside. It’s Christmas Eve. I check the time on my phone, as I’m supposed to meet Mitchell for Christmas dinner with his dad’s family. The minutes pass by, ticking closer to the time when I need to leave. I don’t want to go. I don’t know when the next time I’ll see my grandmother alive will be.

Granny has been sleeping through most of our visits with her. We keep a quiet vigil, on alert every time her breath catches, knowing that each time her chest falls, it may not rise again. When she does wake, she mumbles random phrases, or talks as if she was a child growing up in the Great Depression again. She does not recognize us. We are just trying to keep her comfortable and peaceful until the end.

I check my phone again. I’ve stayed as long as I can. I get up from my chair and say to Mom, “I have to go. Dinner at Mitchell’s mamaw’s house starts in half an hour.”

I walk over to the side of Granny’s bed and grasp her hand. I kiss her wrinkled cheek like I’ve done so many times before.

“Bye, Granny,” I whisper. “I love you.”

Her eyes open, and she searches my face. Then she squeezes my hand, and a flash of recognition I haven’t seen in years is in her eyes. She knows who I am, even if she can no longer pull my name from the recesses of her mind. Beneath the plaques and tangles, and the neurons that no longer fire the way they should, she knows me. She always has.