For The Love of Grandpa and Grandma

Warning: A piece about Alzheimer Disease

It happens imperceptibly, conversation slackening to silence. The old girl works instinctively, bumpy hands with clacking needles, mind deep in thought. Remembering.

Through the stage when forgetful was funny till the rhythm of the relationship is interrupted, never to be the same. No longer to call at will upon intimacy.

Lifelong companions, they endure the absurdity of blossoming illness. The once surfeit of warmth, never staunched by sleep, has slipped, finally, into the icy chill of non-recognition.

Through the window she watches the moon sailing from behind ponderous cloud, shedding monochrome shadows over the Scottish hills and valleys. She lowers her head, working the needles while Brahms gentles her mind.

The old man sits, staring into the yellow flickering flames, wearing the cardigan she knit him last Christmas. As a war bride she had known loneliness, yet somehow this is worse, she knows for certainty he is never coming home.

Disease spreads through him, a hawk, picking him clean, leaving just the stone terrace face as a façade to his absence.

Alzheimer Disease Donate