So my grandma cried tonight. It was heartbreaking. In the past couple of weeks she has had these moments where she realizes she's severely losing her memory. And those times are really really hard. It's like this for me. When she's being annoying, and combative and ridiculous, its irritating but not heart wrenching for just those reasons. She doesn't know what shes doing so I can separate the actions from the person. Often the diatribe people tell you when you complain or your feelings are hurt by something a person with Alzheimer's says or does is "it's the disease" And while that's rarely satisfying, at least its something.
Whats the worse though are those moments of clarity when she knows something is dreadfully dreadfully wrong. Tonight it started simply. She's been cold at night, so we asked her why she won't put a blanket on her bed. She tells us she doesn't have one and my mother and I remind her that she received one from my mother for Christmas this January. Like every other time we tell her something she doesn't remember, she tells us that she never knew she had a new blanket and that no one told her. But when we try to assure her that it was found in her closet and now she can use it, she freaked out.
She couldn't understand how she could have received something months ago, have put it up, never took it out of the plastic wrapping AND not thank my mother for the gift. The last two aren't true, she did look at it, comment on how nice the blanket is and thank my mom. But I find it interesting that not being polite and thanking my mom was tantamount to losing her mind for my grandmother. She was convinced that the next step was not knowing who she was and walking out of the house in the middle of the night and wandering away.
And of course, because she was so busy focusing on how she must be losing her mind, she then couldn't remember going to the doctor today AND running into my brother at the doctor's office. Which, of course, made her more convinced that she was going crazy and as she walked to her room to change for bed, she was wiping tears from her eyes.
I don't know what to do with that. I mean, other than feel sad.
I feel you....my grandma has those moments too sometimes. Like when she looks in the mirror , which is pretty rare nowadays, and looks at herself and wonders why the eff she looks so old and there's that look or recognition as to what happens, and then it's gone again pretty quick. She's too fargone to really cry about it though. That's left up to the rest of us these days.
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