alzheimers

The reason I might forget something is because my mind is like a computer. I have so much useless stuff stored up in there, that when I forget to clean out my Mind's Cache, it has no room for new information. Like wearing pants!

They say you can never step into the same river twice. And maybe that's how it was for Papi now, memories shifting and re-forming soundlessly beneath him while the rest of us sat on the shore and watched.

But I knew he wouldn't kiss me. Not tonight. Not like this. There was too much between us now, all the words and near misses. All the potential, the alternate futures that would stretch out before us in an unending spiral, all built on what happened in this moment. I held his fiery gaze and remembered the five-oh, the half-and-half, the promises I'd whispered to myself in the dawn light.I might lose all my memories one day, but that wouldn't keep me from making them.

What made Olive the saddest about the Gardners was that everyone wanted to be enshrined in someone__ memory. It was the only way of living on after death, really: in the minds of loved ones. Memories were the only things that made aging bearable, a way of reverting to better, simpler days.

My short-term factual memory can be like water; events are a brief disturbance on the surface and then it closes back up again, as if nothing ever touched it. But it__ a strange fact that my long-term memory remains strong, perhaps because it recorded events when my mind was unaffected. My emotional memory is intact too, perhaps because feelings are recorded and stored in a different place than facts. The things that happened deeper in the past, and deeper in the breast, are still there for me, under the water. I won 1,098 games, and eight national championships, and coached in four different decades. But what I see are not the numbers. I see their faces. 'Pat should get a tattoo!' The kids laughed. 'What kind should she get?' 'A heart. She should get a heart.' Little did they know. They are the tattoos.

Bad days my memory functions no better than an out-of-focus kaleidoscope, but other days me recall is painfully perfect.

Dementia isn__ the only place that memories are found to be flawed__eople find out they can__ rely on their memories every day. People blindsided in relationships. People who find out their truth is a lie. People pulled from trauma. People awakened, as in Anna and Eve. I wondered: If you can__ use memories to steer your life, what can you use? I didn__ know. It was why I had to write this book.

If you knew you were going to lose your memorybut you could choose five things you__ never forget, what would they be__ certain face, a taste, a scent,a touch; how deepin this, the middle of your life?

Dementia: Is it more painful to forget, or to be forgotten?

God doesn__ take things away to be cruel. He takes things away to make room for other things. He takes things away to lighten us. He takes things away so we can fly.

And sometimeswhen she does remember,she calls me her little angeland she knows where she isand everything is all rightfor a second or a minuteand then we cry;she for the life that she lostI for the woman I only know about through the stories of her children.

I pray for my mother. That if she can't ever recover what she's lost or what she's losing, that she not feel like she's lost. I pray that we make her feel necessary and valued as long as possible. That she comes to know comfort, even if I can't provide it myself.

A nation discovers its truest dignity when it cherishes the dignity of those from whom it has not heard for a very long time.

In the heart or every caregiver is a knowing that we are all connected. As I do for you, I do for me.

Never give up hope! If you do, you be dead already.

Affirmations are our mental vitamins, providing the supplementary positive thoughts we need to balance the barrage of negative events and thoughts we experience daily.

Butterfly KissesAged imperfectionsstitched upon my faceyears and years of wisdomearned by His holy grace.Quiet solitude in a humble homeall the family scattered nowlike nomads do they roam.Then a giftsent from abovea memorypure and tangiblewrapped in innocence andunquestioning love.A butterfly kisslands gently upon my cheekfrom an unseen childa kiss most sweet.Heaven grants graceand tears followas youth revisitsthis empty hollow.

Caregiving often calls us to lean into love we didn't know possible.