by Pamela A Mertz

Created on: August 01, 2008

My grandmother passed away in October 2003. She had spent the last two years of her life waging a fierce battle against Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. Both of these debilitating conditions robbed my grandmother of who she really was and had been.

Alzheimer's disease is tough on everyone involved, not just the patient. For the last two years of her life, Nanny lived in a nursing home. She had to, for her own safety. She could no longer function safely on her own, and needed help with the basic activities of daily living. That was the hardest part of seeing her decline seeing that a once fiercely independent woman could no longer take care of herself. She had always been so stylish! Nanny always had her silver hair beautifully done, and color-coordinated all of her clothes. She had a collection of earrings for all of the holidays, and took great delight in wearing long dangling pumpkins, snowmen, or bunnies from her ears. She also had blinking-light brooch pins that she would shamelessly wear during the winter holidays, much to the chagrin of her grandchildren. We did find that embarrassing!

Going to Nanny's house was always a treat. She always had iced tea to drink, and we would spend hours together playing scrabble. I remember going to nanny's house many evenings and staying until 2 or 3 in the morning, playing her beloved scrabble. We had so much fun together, we easily lost track of time. To me, it was a safe haven to go to my grandmother's house. It was an escape from the chaos of my own home. There were so many kids, my mom was usually sick or sleeping, and my dad, when he was home, was always screaming or ruling with an iron fist. It was bedlam most of the time, but it was never like that at Nanny's.

Her husband (my grandfather) had died when I was in college, and Nanny lived the last 20 years of her life independently. But she was never alone. She had friends galore, was actively involved in her church, and went to bingo several times a week. I remember going to play bingo with her many times. She had all kinds of good luck charms with her, and other interesting high-tech gadgets. She had a magic wand for her magnetic bingo chips, a glue stick to hold all of her cards together, numerous different colored ink dabbers, and a large, thick black crayon, supposed to be used to mark the numbers off on the last game of each series. I remember once when nanny inadvertently used that crayon to stir her coffee. I thought that was so funny I almost made myself

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