For the past year I’ve watched my grandmother succumb to dementia. In truth she has full-blown Alzheimer's disease, but there’s no doubt in my mind she’d prefer the term dementia if she indeed knew what was eating her brain from the inside. She’s proper, after all, hailing from a generation that says “intestinal fortitude” instead of “guts.” Pushing well into 90 years on this good earth, my grandmother is ox-like from the neck down. Her brain, however, has lost all of its capacity to remember what happened five seconds ago.
Though it sounds cruel, I’m trying my best to forget how she is now, trying to forget how last Christmas, she asked me, “is your mummy still alive?” while my mother and I sat on either side of her. Thus, I’ve found I prefer to pull up the more pearly memories.
