I can’t take any credit for this other than the author being my daughter, but I thought others may relate to it. She wrote this for a class and it reflects the changes we all go through when our parents age.
This I Believe: We Never Die
Growing up, I truly believed that my grandmother’s real name was “Grandma from Florida,” and yes, those two whole additional words, “from Florida,” made her so much better than everyone else’s plain-old, boring just “Grandma.” Today, however, I call her “Mom.”
The summer going into fourth grade, my grandma moved in with us, and, at the time, I had no idea why, other than it was some sort of awesome prolonged visit to be filled with sweets and spoiling. I came home from my first day of fourth grade, calling through the house for my mom, eager to show her my perfectly organized, color-coded dividers and trapper-keeper. Yes, I was, and still am, that type-A kid whose highlight of the day was organizing a binder. To my surprise, rather than my mom answering my excited calls, my grandma rounded the corner saying, “Yes, Lisa, what do you need?” I thought that my grandma was just playing with me, calling me by my mother’s name, so I went along with it and continued to call her “Mom.” I followed her into her makeshift bedroom, not really caring who I shared my excitement with.
Our front room had been converted into her living area, and crammed inside that tiny room was a little twin bed in one corner, my grandmother’s long, wooden dresser shoved against the opposite wall, a television permanently tuned to CNN, and a shower curtain as a crude separator between the room and the front hall. There was also, of course, that distinctive old lady smell of dust and potpourri. Whenever we had visitors over, we always joked with them to “pay no attention to the lady behind the curtain.”
Together we giddily explored the tabs of my binder: red for math, green for science (because nature is green, of course), blue for English, and yellow for history. Through this, she continued calling me Lisa, and I jokingly continued to call her “Mom.” It wasn’t until leaving that I realized my grandma wasn’t playing a game with me. I could see it in her glassy grey eyes and blissful but empty smile that she actually thought I was her daughter. Until that day, the words “dementia” and “Alzheimer’s” meant nothing to me, and I had no idea that they were the reason for my grandma’s extended vacation at our house.
As our Alzheimer’s-fueled, pseudo mother-daughter relationship continued, I ate up every second of my time with her. We became an inseparable duo, baking, cultivating little potted plants and flowers, watching Turner Classic Movies, and stealing handfuls of
complimentary mints from Max and Erma’s together. We even looked alike with our curly hair, squinty-eyed smile, olive complexion, and both of us standing less than five feet tall. In fact, I resembled her more than I did my actual mother. During this time, she also passed certain traditions on to me that had somehow missed my mom, my favorite being the secrets to the family frozen wreath recipe: tricks and tips that she had never written down on our recipe card.
She taught me exactly how to crumble the yeast, beat the eggs, toss the flour (both onto the rolling surface and at each other), and sprinkle the nuts to create the perfect pastry. She and I were the only two in the family who could get the recipe absolutely perfect, making us very popular around the holidays. Even now, I am the only one in the family entrusted to make our sacred recipe.
Day by day, the reality in her head varied, but she always lit up to my call of “Mom,” knowing that it definitely referred to her. Everyone else in my family adopted that nickname for her, as well, including the nurses in her nursing home. My nickname of Lisa faded in and out and eventually turned into just “girl” or “my girl” as even Alzheimer’s stole me and “Lisa” from her memory. Today, when I visit her, often with frozen wreath in my hands, the only response that I can manage to pull out of her is through the word “Mom.” I’m pretty sure that she no longer knows that it refers to her, but I like to think that maybe that word brings about some brief glimpse of a memory, or maybe she just simply knows that “Mom” means “I love you.” Her mind might be gone, but I know that I am always in her heart, and she is always in mine.
This I believe: people never really die. They don’t leave us. Their minds or their bodies might be lost, but their memories, jokes, quirks, curly hair, and baking traditions continue on and are lived out by those whose lives they have touched. In The Lion King, one of the movies that my grandma and I watched over and over again, they sing to Simba, “In your reflection, they live in you,” and this holds true in real life. My grandma is a part of me now, and I believe every time I make a frozen wreath or subconsciously grab a handful of mints from a restaurant that my grandmother lives on. I know that wherever her mind or body goes she will still have a presence in this world through me, and I will continue to share her life, traditions, and memories with those who I love, as well. After all, we can never really die if our love is still alive.