Don't get old

My grandmother was always full of advice. A few months before she died she offered this bit of wisdom: Don't get old.

She was right.

I've always wanted to write about what I called "The Gift of Alzheimer's." My grandmother had a touch of Alzheimer's Disease that became progressively worse in the final months of her life. But the effect it had on her was to replace the here-and-now with a subtly altered corresponding set of perceptions. Her room in the nursing home became the living room of her house. She mapped the various people in her life to people from her past: my mother to my grandmother's sister ("Cioci", meaning "Aunt", pronounced "chicchy"), me to my grandmother's brother, my uncle to my grandfather (or "Pop").

I would visit her and ask her how her day had gone, and she would tell me about how she had gone for a walk downtown to shop in stores that had closed 20 years before, or how Pop and Cioci had come to see her today, or how she had sat on her porch eating peaches. After Princess Diana's funeral in 1997 I asked her if she had seen it on TV - and she said "Yes, I laid on the couch in the living room and cried and cried." I was glad that these were the things that she remembered, rather than the fact that she was spending her days in a bed or a wheelchair in a nursing home, with food provided to her via a tube passing through a hole in her stomach.

But it's not always the case that Alzheimer's is a boon companion in your twilight years. No, sometimes Alzheimer's just really, really sucks.

Don't get old.

Update, 7/17/07: This was written a few days after my father had been admitted to a nursing home. His dementia had apparently worsened, though it was entirely possible that this was due to overmedication by the facility.