I cried for the first time today….the first time since you entered our lives. Up until today I have used humor, denial, and rationale. I have done the things necessary when asked. I’ve attended the Doctor’s Appointments, ran the errands, helped when asked…and kept you an arms distance away. I’ve been responsible…but never ever have I fully processed you…I’ve compartmentalized you into a tight little ball…rolled into a box with the lid tightly closed…labeled…Alzheimer – Do not touch.
And I haven’t…I have reflected and deflected you since 2003…but today for the first time I have “felt” you…like a rumbling train roaring through me…two choked sobs…and I choked you back into that tight little ball and placed you into the box …for now.
I cannot and will not allow you to escape that box I’ve so neatly placed in the back corner of my mind. But I still question you…and I despise you…and I wonder what Cosmic forced or Divine Entity would allow you such free reign. But I will not “feel” you again…I will not respond to your consistent knocking from inside the box…like a child playing a child’s game….gleefully staying out of sight…but also knowing that at some point…we will open the lid. Maybe we won’t willfully open it…but our resolve will weaken…and you will know when it’s time…you play this game so well…so easily…like a Cosmic game of checkers. So easily played by the force behind the game…and so pathetically played by the rest of us…that don’t know the rules…but we know the end game….and that’s enough.
What Cosmic force or Divine Entity would allow you to steal every last ounce of dignity?…what Cosmic Force or Divine Entity would allow you to keep your victim in a void of nothingness for years…letting their shells exist in a state of oblivion…sitting in a hole of perpetual darkness…afraid of everything…recognizing nothing…with moments of violence because they have nothing else. No memories to draw from…nothing to help them remember why they are here…that they once had a purpose…that they once had a life worth living.
You gleefully steal everything from your Victims…and your bonus is the havoc it places on everyone around them. What a treat it must be for you…how the tentacles of your wrath can reach far beyond its original host…destroying all that comes too close…or cares.
There are all kinds of horrid diseases…and they all wreak their own type of havoc…but there is something especially sinister about you…for years we have dealt with Dementia, and it was often dealt with in the privacy of one’s family…known as crazy Aunt Jean who talks to lamps…but you are much more evil…and perhaps that’s your origin…manifested from all that is evil in the world.
For now you are tucked back into that tight little corner…where you will gleefully stay…for now…you Rat Bastard Bitch of a disease.
Losing Dad 
hi
I lost my dad to alzheimer’s two weeks ago.
Reading your blog has helped me to cry, to cry my eyes out. To finally start getting to the end of this journey.
It’s impossible to understand how harsh this disease can be on us, their children. People can’t relate, you feel lonely and grieving, noone seems to understand that you’re losing your dad, although he’s there. In my case I lost my whole family, since my half siblings went totally nuts once he was hospitalised and ever since they simply stop talking to me, even at his funeral.
My mother is just like your mother, she’s been exhausted for years. She institutionalised him only after it was really impossible to cope. I got to see my dad peeing on my shoes, confusing the kitchen with the toilet. My mother had to ask neighbours for help to pick him up off the floor. He would beat her sometimes at that time and he had to start wearing diapers.
Until two weeks ago my first question when phoning my mom was “how is he?”. Now there’s not much to talk about.
I grieved for 12 years. I’m now 30, so I was only 18 when everything began. I still remember the day I noticed that something was wrong: he was driving me to school and suddenly he got completely lost. I was only a teenager, it was really scary.
And all the times he would talk in a reunion and I felt terrified and hoped noone would notice.
And how he stopped watching TV and only stared blankly at the screen.
Only when he died did I remember clearly how he was before everything happened.
Thanks for writing this blog.