She looked at me with a big smile and I hugged her with both arms wrapped around her frail little shoulders.  When she pulled back, she turned to my mom and said, “Now, who is this?”

My little heart fell all the way to the tiled floor.

Let me back up.  My grandmother’s mental health has been deteriorating over the past several years, but particularly in the last year, it has gotten progressively worse.  Her children–my dad and his sisters–made the heart-breaking decision a few weeks ago to move her from her cottage outside the nursing home into a room inside the nursing home where she would get the constant care that she needs.  This move was filled with sadness and adult temper-tantrums from my stubborn grandmother who doesn’t think she needs help.  I was absent during this moving time, but I heard about the stories from my aunt MJ’s daily updates.  They were heart-breaking.  It was tough to hear my aunt describe taking care of my grandmother as if she were a child, dealing with the constant “I want to go home now” and the “why are you doing this to me?” accusations and questions.

Things have settled down slightly and I knew I needed to go visit Grandma.  My mom graciously offered to go with me my first time; perhaps she knew how hard it would be.  My whole drive to Kalona from North Liberty, I coached myself with positive thoughts saying, “She’ll know who you are.  She’ll know.”  I knew she might not.  I knew she didn’t even know her own sisters sometimes.  I knew that you should never say, “Do you know who I am?” to someone with dementia.  I knew in my head that she may not know, but my heart so badly wanted her to know.

As my heels click-clicked down the nursing home hallways towards my grandma’s room, my heart beat faster and faster.  Maybe she wouldn’t know me.  But…maybe this was a good day for her.  Maybe she remembered things today.

When she asked who I was, I tried ever so graciously to introduce myself and move on as if this was nothing unusual.  Knowing my name now and that I am her granddaughter helped trigger a memory, perhaps her favorite of me.  She laughed as she remembered aloud about a time when I, as a little girl, went to her house and wouldn’t talk.  She tried and tried to get me to talk and I finally, stubbornly, looked at her and said, “Sometimes I just don’t feel like talking.”

As we sat down in her small room, I couldn’t help but notice the distinct change.  My grandmother isn’t the strong woman whipping up the best carrot cookies in Washington County anymore or staying up late to play dominoes with my cousin and I at a sleepover.  My grandmother is now the child, if you will.  The one who you have to coax to have a conversation.  The one who gets lost mid-sentence and trails off.  The one who tries so hard to remain the adult, but can’t control what she can and can’t remember.

Mom suggested that we walk outside to the garden.  Though she’s been there before, she was surprised to find out again that there was a garden outside.  She walked through it commenting how beautiful it was, like it was the first time she had seen it.

Indeed, my heart was aching by the time I took her frail, porcelain hand to lead her back to her room.  I dropped my mom off back at her house and then headed home to North Liberty.  I was only a mile down the road when the tears started coming.  I felt proud of myself in a way for holding them back for so long.  I had been broken since the hug back in my grandma’s room.

I cried in my car as I drove, tears blocking my vision at times.  I yelled into the silence of the car, “WHY?!  I hate Alzheimer’s!!!  I hate aging!  I hate that she couldn’t remember who I am!!!!!  I know it’s not her fault, but I hate the disease!!!  I love my grandma.  I hate her disease.  I don’t want to be forgotten!!!”

In the stillness of the car after my rage, I felt a small whisper saying, “I will never forget you.”  I looked up to the clouds, the sunset, and knew, indeed, He won’t ever forget me.  He’ll carry me through, just as He’s carried me through everything else in my life.  The old hymn “Great in the Thy faithfulness” popped into me head.

I called my oldest sister and left a hiccuping, sobbing message on her phone.  I told her that there was something so real about my experience visiting Grandma that threw away any doubts in me that maybe she wasn’t as bad as the rest of my family had said.  Maybe she wasn’t getting so bad so quickly.  Maybe…

But reality was like a cold, wet fish.  It had hit me in the face and it stunk big time.

I cannot stop this process of life.  I cannot make miracles happen or reverse time.  I can only use the time I have left in precious ways.  In the honesty of the silence of my car, with tears still streaming down my cheeks, I realized that maybe this was why I had waited for 3 weeks to go visit her.  Maybe in my deepest heart of hearts, I was terrified of what I might encounter when I saw her.  I was terrified that she wouldn’t know me.

Now that I have my first, nerve-jarring, soul-stretching, heart-wrenching experience out of the way, maybe the rest of my visits will be easier.  Now I know the truth and I know the reality.  I can’t escape it anymore or put it in the back of my mind as a possibility rather than a truth.  Maybe, over time, this thing called Alzheimer’s will get easier to deal with, easier for me to face.  I’m only hoping, of course.  But even if it doesn’t, great it Thy faithfulness, oh God, my Father.

“I will never forget you.”  And beyond shadow of doubt or reasoning, I know He will be true to that promise.  I won’t be forgotten.