Alzheimer's Disease
On the first Sunday of every month, I wake up and drive down to the Wentworth Home--the permanent residence of my grandmother. From the rear entrance, I enter the nursing home. I walk three flights of stairs to the basement, where she lives in a special section. Through the one way security gate, I walk down the narrow pathway; my grandmother sits at a large circular table. The other men and women bounce a ball back and forth across the table. She does not notice. She stares into space, as if focused on a particular point.
When I come up and tap her on the shoulder, she comes out of her trance and looks at me. A meager smile comes to her face. She stares at me through her bifocals with glassy eyes, and I smile back. Her face has atrophied into layers of wrinkles. Although she is only in her mid-sixties, she looks like a women of ninety. After I begin to talk to her, she begins to sing. I can not understand what she is singing because she can no longer form words. Her chapped lips open, and in a high tone wisper she sings "da da da da da" over and over, the notes and volume never change; niether do her facil expressions, but you can tell by the look in her eyes that she is feeling happiness. Although most of her mind has left her and she can no longer remember how to walk or do anything for herself, I am grateful she still remembers how to sing.
Once she was the epitome of beauty; Five foot nine, with long red hair, and big brown eyes. Her personality was equally magnificant; not only was she impecably honest, and funny, but she could find the good in any situation. Now all that remains is an empty body. When I look at her, all I see is a ghost and a lifeless frame of the women she once was. I talk to her and tell her how her family is doing, but she can not understand it. She leans her head back slowly and begins to sleep. I do not want to wake her, so I get up to leave. When I touch her hair to kiss her good-bye, I see that hardly any remains. The flowing red hair of her youth is now short and has turned white. It seems she is dwindling away to nothing in front of my eyes, and there is nothing anyone can do. I turn away and walk to the gate, trying to remember her when I was young, before Alzheimer's disease took away her soul, and left her with this lifeless body.