The Struggle Is {Alzheimer's} Irony

I don't know you.

Words you never want to hear a loved one utter to you.  The fact that in their fading memory bank you are irrelevant.  Someone who is a stranger.  Your 33, 50, 67 years which consisted of them being in your life are a dark pit of nothing.

Strangely enough we, the ones who aren't facing our brains being eaten away, are also looking at the loved one who once was sharp as a tack and we're saying those same words.

I don't know you.

That's what hurts the most.  Not that the loved one with Alz/Dem doesn't know us but that in this disease we lost who they are to us.

Appearances don't change too much but personality takes a huge dive.  What made them, them, is now wiped away like the whiteboard at the end of the school day.

The calm, meek, mild person is replaced with a person who is angry, rude, and ill.

We constantly have to remember:

It isn't a choice to forget.

It isn't a choice to change personality traits.

It is a disease that strips you of your self.

Isn't it ironic that during the course of Alzheimer's they forget us and we forget them as they were?  

Alzeheimer's Disease is savage and ruthless.  No one deserves to have their memories erased or to lose the ability to care for themselves in the simplest ways.  Let's #ENDALZ together.