At the tender age of 16, my sensitive and insightful daughter Lexi (who is now 18) found these words in her heart about her grandmother, JG's descent in the darkness of Alzheimer's disease.  I share them with you (with her permission) to demonstrate that when the "thief" breaks in a home, it wants not only the diagnosed individual, but the entire family.  Lexi's memories are painfully tender and real.

“A Devil’s Disease and the Memories I Have”
Dedicated to Jean & Carlos Gibbons, my Grandparents

His expectation for her smile lessens and lessens day after day.  It’s because her droopy eyes drop lower and lower with each of her brief and blistering breaths.  He feeds her chocolate bars three times a day because that is all her cloudy brain can like.  He lost his life long love and he’s not sure where she went.  The worst part about it is that he has to look at her face every day and know that her spirit is leaving his side.

I walked into the boxy, jail-like clinic room where my grandmother lays with her mouth ajar.  Once I saw pops feeding her and saying “I love you”, I stepped outside just to listen to what was going on within a flawless relationship coming to a sorrowful end.  But it wasn’t sorrowful at all.

“Jean, I love you.  Happy Anniversary,” Pops said using all his human strength not to cry.  At that moment I started to cry, but before five tears could fall from my eyes, I heard sweet spine tingling song travel across the room to my cold and nervous ears.  My grandmother extended her arms like a one year old reaches for her mother.  The music triggered a feeling in her heart and caused the only angel left in her soul to give her one last memory.  They danced for what seemed like an eternity to my grandfather because he was doing all that he could to capture that look in her eyes, the smell of her hair, and that familiar feel of her hips when he holds them.  They waddled like ducks entering a pond.  They took bread crumb size steps in little circles, almost like they didn’t want to let the outside world touch their last moment of love.

Her mouth was still ajar as her fragile hands held him on his strong shoulders.  While she was drifting day after day, he was staying strong and healthy.  He really didn’t think that was fair.  Once the song was over he held her close and kissed her delicately on the forehead.  She didn’t once extend her arms from the bird-like position she had when she started to dance.  That truly didn’t matter to him.  She knew him for a second and he finally got to say goodbye and feel what he felt when they married at their ripest of age.

He started to walk out standing tall like the soldier he once was and had one crystal tear fall from his weakening eyes.  He can not see out of one of his eyes and he has bad vision in the other and still refuses to get them fixed.  I honestly think it is because he feels that God is being unfair in making my grandmother suffer and not him.  He will never tell anyone this.  Pops has a Farm House.  Not a place with animals, but a quirky chaotic place with false and real artifacts from hundreds of years ago to the present.  There are narrow, random rows that are barely two baby feet wide.  You could stay in there for hours on end looking wide-eyed at the odd array of objects he has.  It’s his pride and joy, his little Farm House in Chapin, South Carolina.  His bad eyes, his fear of flying, his house by the lake, and his pride in the south are the five things that define him as a person.

Jean, however, is a little bit more intricate to explain.  She is complicated and difficult in every sense of the word and passed her genes on exactly to me and my mother.  My favorite memory of her is when I was seven years old and she and I were home alone together.  My mother left me in her hands saying, “Don’t let her eat any sugar!”  My grandma, however, spoils me rotten and has always treated me with the idea that I should get anything I want, whenever I want it.  So we sat with the hot, humid air dancing across our backs and the cold, sticky cherry Popsicle juice dripping down our fingers.  The sun was beaming in the perfect spot.  Somehow we were not in the shade but had no reason to squint our eyes.  It was almost as if God was protecting that one area so that we could have one of the last moments she would ever remember.  I remember her laugh, and how the vibrations traveled through my ear.  She would laugh at any of my giggles and flinches.  The vibrations of her voice were so jocular and young, happy and strong.  You could almost hear her pride in her voice, and see her and her friends laughing, playing cards as the sound traveled through the air.

They had this boat and this Jet Ski.  But they only used them when their children and their children’s children forced them to pull the weeds out of the engines.  The boat was square and white.  The walls were always so covered with spider webs that a child could barely stand without wrapping himself in white.  The Jet Ski was old school.  My dad would always take me out on it and it never got old.  I remember when we went onto the still Lake Murray water when I was young.  My dad has always been kind of a maniac and his favorite thing to do is scare me half to death.  So he did this 360 degree spin and I went flying into the lake.  It was cold and gritty and I couldn’t help but feel like there were little baby crocodiles nibbling at my toes.  The warmth I felt when he lifted me back into the Jet Ski left me smiling and left him laughing at my face.

As humans we have the ability to connect memory with faces, places, smells, sights and touch.  I could never imagine losing all the memories I have built.  The disease my grandma has is a devil-sent disease.  He steals people’s dreams and memories and replaces them with a blank state of nothing.  There is not even a white blank panel to look at.  It is truly nothing.  The people affected experience one of the things that we have never been able to grasp.  Nothingness.

He sat her down in her chair that she has loved all her life.  Her family made sure that she had the most comfortable chair even though she wouldn’t know the difference.  He kissed her on the forehead once more and watched her mouth quiver at the touch and gape open wide.  Her eyes shook and closed.  Her mind didn’t change stages, but he knew at that moment that she was asleep.  He was happy because he knew that in a state of sleep, she had a better chance of angels reaching her.

“I love you,” he murmured.

“Mmmm,” was all she could slur while she slept.

And then, we walked away.  Leaving her in a world we know nothing of.

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Lexi is 16 years old this summer. She often writes expressive pieces like this poem she wrote for her grandmother, JG, on her birthday.

On your birthday dear grandmother of mine, I wish you guidance.

I wish you guidance that I know you have already, wherever your soul really is.

I wish you love, love that you have had for everyone you’ve met, ever.

I wish you happiness, because you had the most memorable life.

I wish you popsicles, in honor of all the ones we used to have.

I wish you faith, because you are a great woman of it.

It’s painful to every single one of is, because we don’t get to play at the lake with you anymore, or for my mom, because she can’t talk to you about her life. She sees you on such a level of majesty JG; you should see her eyes when she looks at your picture.

But you have passed on such wonders to your family, and your life was nothing but wonderful. Why you’re in pain I’m not sure. I think about it every day you know, how much you’re not there, and how Pops still sees you two times a day. About how you have 3 kids, and 6 grandkids you can’t think about anymore. And when I think about it, I always conclude that your bright little soul has to be somewhere smiling, dreaming and laughing at us, because you are just that strong.

Happy Birthday JG, I love you. Always will. Your story will never be forgotten.