Demented Thursday: Asking a hard question.

I have a question to pose to you today.  It may sound morbid to some and just depressing to others but to me the answer is starting to be very easy to find.

Does Alzheimer's make the death of our loved one easier to accept?

I have spent a lot of time sharing moments with my grandmother.  These moments were a mixture of funny, sad, happy, and anger.  I will look back on this blog when she is spirited away and I will giggle at some of the funnier things that this awkward disease led her to say and do.

On Monday my husband's grandfather was laid to rest.  He had spend the last six years of his eighty-nine with Alzheimer's Disease.  I had met him just six years ago when he and his wife came to my house to see their newest great-grandchild.  At that point he was already mixing up people and forgetting things like where he was and what time it was.

As I sat at his funeral I started putting together this blog post in my mind.

Does Alzheimer's make the passing of the loved one easier?

I have experienced death of a grandparent in two ways.  In 2005 I lost my "Mammaw" to a massive heart attack.  It was "out of the blue" and sudden.  I had just seen her a week and half before her life was taken by some clogged arteries.  We chatted and smiled and had a good visit.  She was the grandparent I was closest to.  I had mountains of memories with her.  I had spent the majority of my young child life in her garden, in her kitchen, in her living room, garage, front yard, and sleeping in my youngest aunt's bedroom.  She was the first stop on my way home each day.

At 7:15am on July 1, 2005 I heard words from my dad's mouth that I can still hear clear as a bell today - "Amanda, Mammaw died last night."

The world stood still and I lost control of my muscles and hit the ground.  I was angry, sad, and immediately numb.  A friend offered me a cigarette which I took but couldn't hold in my lips because they quivered incessantly.

Why didn't I get to see her one more time?

Why was she dead?  She was the one I knew would never in a million years pass first!

She was only 72.  There is no way she is dead.

This isn't right.  She was supposed to be at my wedding one day.  She was supposed to play with my kids.  She was supposed to share some recipes with me.  She was supposed to be sitting in that yard chair when I pulled in next week and we would sit there talking while watching passing cars.

I had been stripped, my heart beaten, and my mind rattled.  But there was beauty --- she never was forced to lie in a bed and have her quality of life stripped of her.  She wasn't on a battery of medications to survive.  She lived her life fully until within a few minutes she was taken home.  That is a blessing - though hard on the remaining - to go swiftly without pain.

When my grandfather passed three years later I celebrated his final peace.  This man was a giant of a man to a little girl.  He stood over 6'1 and was built broad and strong.  He had tanned skin, dark hair, he was pretty much the stereotypical stud of the 1950's.

To say he was a good man is a huge understatement.  He was a phenomenal man.  An active Mason, businessman, church man, family man, tractor man.....he was the type of guy that is hard to find these days.

He loved the merry go round at the local Masonic Picnic (now defunct for a mini fair) and he always had his grandkids tickets to go.  He cleaned his nails in church.  He loved eating ice cream on the porch with his family.

Experiencing the end of his life was a long process.  It began in the 1990's with heart disease and bypass surgery and then was a pretty major stroke in the early 2000s leading to partial blindness, problems ambulating, renal issues, and diabetes.

For nearly 15 years we watched him become smaller, more fragile, fading....

I hated seeing this man who I had known as a child as a giant losing his life daily.  It made me incredibly mad when people would think he was going to just bounce back one day and make a full recovery by some miraculous drug or drink.

For the first time in my life my heart ached as I watched him lie in his bed at home with tears streaming down the sides of his face.  I'll never forget leaning in to kiss him on the cheek and whispering:  "I know you hurt and I know you are tired of fighting.  If you need to go on you can, we'll take care of Mom-o.  I promise."

He opened his eyes and shook his head.  I never have shared that moment until now.  I tear up as I see him crying in that bed.  He was always so strong and it was as if he was feeling that strength slip away.

Three months later in a quiet hospital room in town I walked in his room.  My uncle had told him goodbye.  My grandma had told him goodbye.  My mom and I sat beside him as he actively had hit the dying process.  His feet and legs were hurting and he would draw them up and moan.  The nurse said he had probably already lost vision.  We rubbed those aching legs and tired feet.  We held his huge hands.  Then we both gave him a kiss on the cheek and said we loved him.

I will tell you....there is no beauty in watching a loved one slowly pass away.  It is painful and it will take your heart and squeeze it so hard you are left gasping and disoriented.  But then again maybe there was something beautiful - I got to say goodbye to someone who could hear me and understand me.  I got to say I love you once more at the end of some one's hours.  There is beauty - true beauty in that moment.

So what is it like to lose someone you love before they leave this earth?  What is it like to have a loved one who no longer knows you from Adam, maybe is combative towards you pass away?

I do not know yet.  I know that day will come.  From my experience the only beauty in this detrimental brain disease is this....we get some time to say goodbye while they are still alive and kicking.  We get some funny moments and some silly actions that make us chuckle before the depressing side kicks in.  Maybe the tiny flecks of gold in the disease that I hate so much is the fact that we get a chance so slowly say goodbye while they still know us, still know our people.  Instead of them being quickly taken away from this earth we're given some stages where we can reminisce with them and then some stages where that has to stop and we have to go with what is going on in their worlds.

Alzheimer's is a very tiring disease for the afflicted and the family.  When we get to a certain point and we recognize the loved one we know has been wiped of their personality maybe that's the tiny bit of acceptance of what is to come.

Try to find beauty in the worst of things....I promise there is some there.