I got the best news today.  Honestly, this news just sent me over-the-top with excitement.  If I were cheesy and in junior high, I would be peppering these sentences with exclamation points and bold words and double underlines.

Remember a few months ago, when I first told you about my grandma?  (If you can’t, you can read it here.)  I had been stricken that my grandma didn’t know who I was when I first visited her after her move into the nursing home and her diagnosis of Alzheimer’s.  In the times since that first, heart-breaking visit, things have been pretty even-keel.  Grandma still doesn’t remember me, but I’m more used to it now and so I just reintroduce myself and call her “Grandma” like I always have.  She hasn’t ever said my name on her own though.  She either doesn’t know me at all or recognizes that I’m part of the family, but she can’t remember me exactly.

Today that changed.  Even if only for a single moment of clarity, it changed.

As told to me by my mother:  Mom was visiting her today and pointed toward to the bulletin board on the wall with family photos pinned to it.  She asked Grandma if she knew who the people were on the board.  Grandma said that of course she did.  So Mom got more specific and asked if she knew their names.  Grandma didn’t; she said she couldn’t see that far without her glasses.  When Mom pulled some photos off of the board and brought them over to her, she said she recognized them, but she couldn’t name them.  (To her credit, she has 6 children, 18 grandchildren, and 22 great-grandchildren.  I’d have a hard time with names too!)  Mom kept showing her different pictures of my cousins and Grandma couldn’t name them.  Then Mom showed her this picture from my first visit…

…and asked her who it was.  Without a single second of hesitancy, Grandma looked at it and said, “Well, of course I know who that is.  That’s Emily.”

I wasn’t there; I didn’t witness any of it.  But knowing her recognition of me, that she knew who I was, that is enough for me.  It makes me tear up with happiness because back on that day that the photo was taken, I had wanted to sob (and I did after I left) because I felt like I was forgotten and that this special woman with white hair, porcelain skin, and a bony little body would never remember that I was her granddaughter.

But today, she remembered.

My heart is aching in the most pleasing way, like it’s just going to overflow.  And though I know the next time I see her, she probably will not remember me again, I am okay with that.  I recognize that she won’t always have those clear moments–most of the time, things will be foggy and fuzzy in her memory–but those glorious moments when her memory snaps it’s far-sighted glasses into place, well, those are the moments that make all the sad moments worth it.

Grandma, thank you for remembering me today.  You have made this granddaughter feel like the most precious little girl again.  I love you.  Always.