When I was growing up in a Jewish school, the Rabbi’s son asked me, “What’s it like to live with your grandparents?” It was an innocent question but not a surprising one.
My grandparents took me in when I was a baby, and I do not remember life before them. To me, they are just mom and dad.
Coming home to grandma and grandpa instead of mom and dad felt like the biggest difference to me as a child when I compared my life to the traditional families I saw around me. And for a really long time, decades in fact, that remained the biggest difference, aside from the fact that I came out in my early 20s.
My mom began losing her memory
Then, in my mid-20s, something else started to differentiate me once again from my peers. My mom had begun to lose her memory.
There are many feelings associated with memory loss. Embarrassment, shame. I did not feel either of those. Anger and sadness bubbled to the surface instead.
Anger that I had to experience this at my age and sadness in coming to terms with the fact that my mother would likely never meet my children. A woman who, in her late 40s, decided to become a mother again for a fourth time to her first grandchild.
Not a single person in my personal or professional network seemed to be able to relate to what I was going through.
I cannot count how many nights I cried myself to sleep or how many times I broke down publicly. At events, at parties, at work. I felt like a pot of water constantly boiling over. For years, I suffered in silence, afraid to broach the topic with my family and unable to open up to anyone else.
Then, I started talking about it.
I asked my dad questions
The very people who did not want to talk about it were the very people impacted most. My dad, who barely has a memory of life without my mom. My aunt, who fears one day she will experience the same symptoms. And me, who never thought this would happen to me — even after watching my mom go through this with her mother.
I started asking my dad questions, letting him know I was there for him however he needed me.
To me, he became the superhero I always knew he was.
My parents have been married for 61 years. They met when they were 17 and 20 years old, and they are now both in their 80s. My father, a child of immigrants and Holocaust survivors and a former small-business owner, has supported two generations of children.
He worked incredibly hard and built a successful business. Everyone knew him in our town. He and my mom attended every single art class, soccer practice, and Taekwondo lesson. He cooked, he planted vegetables, and he did so much to create the most beautiful, perfect life for all of us. He still does.
My dad keeps my mom active
Every week, he accompanies my mom to various activities to challenge her brain and keep her happy and healthy: ping-pong, swimming lessons, weightlifting, and Zumba classes. At times, it sounds like they are living on a college campus. Every time I see her, she is laughing and smiling.
What has not changed is the way she looks at him and me. I am her favorite child, after all.
When my fiancé got engaged this past summer, my only priority was planning a wedding quickly. My dad encouraged me to plan it within a year to make sure my mom could attend and understand what was happening.
We will be married at the end of next summer, and my mother — and father — will be walking me down the aisle. There is no doubt in my mind. I could not imagine celebrating this milestone without my two best friends by my side.
I realized I’m not alone
When I graduated from graduate school, my parents each wrote me a note on the card they gave me. My mom wrote, “You can be anything.” Those words are now tattooed on my left wrist, a constant reminder of how much she has always believed in me. On my right wrist is a tattoo of a Chai necklace my dad gave me, which his father gave him. It is a constant reminder of the challenges each generation in my family has succeeded through.
My father has my mother completing coloring books every week now. My partner and I plan to frame some of her drawings for our children’s bedroom one day. Regardless of what the next couple of years brings my family, my mother’s presence will be everywhere.
The more I talked about my experience and feelings, the more I realized that multiple people around me were in similar situations. People in their 20s, 30s, and 40s all told me about a parent who was living with memory loss and how it impacted their families.
The Alzheimer’s Association says that almost two-thirds of Americans living with Alzheimer’s are women. Please remember, none of us are ever really alone.
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