by Melinda Clayton

Created on: May 04, 2009   Last Updated: May 07, 2009

Newly married at the age of 25, my husband and I quickly discovered the difficulties encountered when love meets Alzheimer's disease. Within weeks of our marriage, we found ourselves the unwitting caretakers of my 83-year-old grandmother.

I'd always been close to my grandmother, both emotionally and geographically, so we were thrilled to rent a home right next door. And, in the beginning, it was a wonderful situation all around. We often shared meals and visited, trading gossip over cups of coffee.

The deterioration, when it came, was swift and merciless. A retired teacher, my grandmother had always been fiercely independent, outspoken and hard working. The first sign of trouble came when she called one morning to demand who had slept at my house the night before. She saw a strange truck in the driveway, and being old fashioned, was furious that I'd had overnight company as an unmarried young woman.

Confused, I reminded her that I was now married, and that the truck belonged to my husband, with whom she'd just had dinner the night before. My explanations fell on deaf ears. She slammed down the phone, vowing to call my father to tell him "what I'd been up to."

Almost before we could catch our collective breath, my grandmother spiraled downward into a world of hallucinations, delusions, and confusion. She was often frightened, hearing noises that weren't there and seeing intruders who didn't exist.

She was also angry - furiously, frighteningly angry. She shouted and accused, feeling nonexistent slights and dwelling on imagined wrongs. My grandmother, who had always valued honesty beyond all else, became untruthful, confused by the chaos in her own mind.

Even now, sixteen years later, I feel a welling of conflicting emotions as I remember that time: frustration, fear, sadness, and guilt. I knew she couldn't help it, yet in the midst of the paranoia and the accusations, it was difficult to remember the grandmother who'd taught me the names of birds and flowers, who'd first fed me snow cream and sang nursery rhymes.

My husband and I did all we could. We called older relatives in different states to beg for help, but it was difficult for them to understand. No one could believe the tales we told; they were too farfetched, surely we must be exaggerating.

Besides, the tales she told them were quite different. They were disappointed in us, angry with us, surprised that we would paint such a picture of my beloved grandmother. How bad could it be, really? Was it too much to ask

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>