Waving from the Window

I wrote this story, of my grandpa and the terrible disease he had, a little while back, and i thought I would share it now. We just finished covering Alzheimers in class. I hope it helps someone. 

"This is my grand-daughter. She’s a brain. Makes straight A’s, and got a scholarship to Berea College,” Those were the words my pawpaw said to the nurse his first day in the long-term care facility. I will never forget that as long as I live. I know it may seem like a simple statement, but the fact that my Pawpaw, diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, not only remembered me, but was praising me to a staff member I’d never even met, spoke volumes to me.

I’ll never forget the day I found out he had Alzheimer’s. It was Father’s Day three years ago. Usually, with it being Sunday, I would bring him to church with me, but he said he was not feeling well, so he did not come. I brought him back lunch and ate with him, and he did not seem too much different. Lately, though, he had been forgetting things. He could not remember how to fill out his checks, he would forget to mail something in, forget to get the oil changed in his truck, just simple things like that. I suspected something, but I was just 18 at the time, and did not really even know what to do. At the same time, I did not want anything to be wrong. He was the father figure in my life, and we did everything together. My mom and I lived next door to him, so he was always there, and I saw him every day.  He even taught me how to drive. He’d sit back in his little Toyota Tacoma, smoke a cigarette, and tell me I was doing a great job. Even the time I accidently rolled through a stop sign. He just chuckled and said, “Glad no one was coming—just make sure to watch next time.”

That night, I went to church like normal. When my mom pulled into the driveway, she noticed my pawpaw in the back yard. How she noticed this, I will never know. That moment is when my world changed. He was in the back yard, confused, sweating profusely, just sitting on the ground. My mom called 911, and I kneeled to the ground trying to talk to him, to orient him to reality. Nothing he said made sense. I finally just held his hand as we waited for the ambulance.

What followed from that was a long couple of weeks in the hospital. The one thing I knew is that my world would never be the same. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s during this time. His condition improved, and at the discretion of my mom and uncle, he was placed into a long-term care facility. I remember how hard it was seeing him there. The memories I had of him were him sitting in a lawn chair in our yard watching cars go up and down the highway, or him just riding down the road with me, or us watching John Hagee on television together. My memory was not of him in what I saw as a cold, standardized, hospital setting.

I remember leaving for college that fall, and every weekend I came back to see him. Regardless of the diagnosis, he was still the same encouraging pawpaw I had always known. Things were different, yes, but he still made me feel loved. There were times we would talk like we always had, and I would think to myself, maybe he could get better. I know that did not make any sense, and I knew how the disease worked, I just really did not want to accept its finality. There were even a few times I would see him waving out of the window down to the parking lot as I came in the facility. Regardless of the good times though, he still had the rough times. On my nineteenth birthday, my mom asked him how old he thought I was going to be. He replied, “Seven, eight, nine, maybe.” That was hard for me, but I knew he must have just seen me as the same little girl that tagged along with him everywhere. There were some more bad times, bad typical Alzheimer’s moments, but I did not focus on that. I focused on getting to still see him, still getting to talk to him, the fact that he was still there.

One night, as we were told, he was rearranging things in his room. That was one of the things he did a lot when he was confused. As he was trying to move a recliner in his room, he had a terrible fall. He never recovered, and on April 3, 2011, one of the most important people in my life left this world. I was devastated, and it is something I do not think I have ever fully recovered from, but I do feel like I learned some things from the experience. I learned to value each moment you get with the people in your life. I learned to not focus on the negative in a situation, and just be glad that you get time with that person. I also learned that regardless of the disease, Alzheimer’s especially, they are still that person you always loved. Now, three years later, whenever I drive by that facility, I just think of him waving at me from his window, telling one of the nurses that his grand-daughter had come to see him. It gives me a reason to move forward, and it gives me a reason to work to make him proud at this stage in my life.