First, I would like to take this opportunity to extend my thanks to those visiting this site. My sister has bravely pioneered some very important work with the Memory Foundation and Leeza's Places - it is my mother's legacy. For those families who are coping with this disease, I offer my empathy. Family relationships are tested when a crisis like an AD diagnosis happens. My mother used to always say "what doesn't tear us apart makes us stronger" and she was right. My family is blessed to have become closer while battling this beast together. I pray that yours will too. I am the youngest of Jean and Carlos' three children, the one they refer to as "free spirited". Being seven and ten years behind my brother and sister, I grew up more as a kid sister to them and we didn't form the close friendships that we have now until we were all adults. Being the only kid at home, Mom and I shared a different, sometimes deeper kind of bond. We fought like sisters and were really, the best of friends. When she was diagnosed, it hit me in a way I was not prepared for. When you know that you are going to lose part of your family, it feels like you are losing part of yourself as well. Of course loss is part of life, but Alzheimer's Disease makes it a part of your life every day. There was no way that I could prepare for that. It alters the life of everyone in the family. For me, that meant moving from California back to South Carolina with my infant son to live with my father. The life I had imagined disappeared as I realized I had to be there. It was also the time when I realized that no matter how carefully or carefree you choose to live your life, life itself will always have the option of altering your plans. So now I find myself in a very different life than the one I had envisioned, and I think my mother too, finds herself in similar circumstances. That old saying "you can't choose what happens to you, you can only choose how you react to it", rings so true. The only way that I can find peace in this is to be proactive and lean on those I love for support. Grief comes in waves and you find yourself on the crest in moments that catch you unprepared. As a family, we act as a safety net for each other. We are extraordinarily blessed to genuinely like one another, but I have seen diseases like this have a different effect in families; alienation, guilt, anger - again, what doesn't tear you apart, will make you stronger. The trick is, to be strong. To let love win. To let it hurt. To share it. That's not always easy. My mother is the second generation in my family to suffer this disease. Chances are, there will be a third generation unless we can find a cure, a vaccine, something. We have come a long way, but while we're all working relentlessly to find that cure, we still have to react to it's reality in our daily lives. It is a looming force. There is always a little fear in the back of my mind that my son may one day have his heart broken as he watches me disappear. That it will one day become hard for him to remember who I really am when I have forgotten everything myself, and I exist but do not live. I think about that alot, but then I remind myself, the trick is to be strong. To let love win. And like I said, that's not always easy. Cammy Gibbons