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When my grandmother first showed symptoms of Alzheimer's, we thought she was just losing her hearing. Although it sounds callous, my siblings and I found it humorous that she never understood what we were saying. She would repeat what she thought she heard, and it always rhymed with our previous sentence and made no sense at all. Unfortunately, we looked upon it as entertainment in our immaturity. A few years later, she started losing most of her words altogether and repeated certain phrases over and over. Sometimes she would just sit on her couch and laugh rather than speak anytime anyone addressed her. On Christmas, she not only laughed when given her presents, but left them in her lap unwrapped. She was fading away.

I absolutely do not regret seeing her in the early phases, although I am ashamed at the shallow way I handled it.

Soon enough, she reached a stage that many of the sufferers do, in which she'd have pretty nasty outbursts over daily routines such as bathing. It was time for around the clock care in a nursing home. In the meantime, I had given birth to her first great-grandchild, and felt that it would be a good idea for my grandmother to see him. First, however, I decided to visit a few times on my own.

The time in the nursing home was strange, awkward, and almost regrettable. I never knew how long to stay. She didn't talk to me, and I wasn't sure what to say to her. Usually after 15-20 minutes, I was more than ready to leave.When I first went, she would not stop walking. She went down the corridor, all the way to the end and then back again. She did not pause in her step, and did not look at me as I tried to keep up with her and get her attention. One time she did stay on a sofa and I tried to show her pictures, but there were no signs of recognition of me and she barely glanced at the photos. The most disturbing behavior was that she would go in other people's rooms while I was there, and try to pull down her pants to go to the bathroom. Luckily, the nurses were on the ball, but I was understandably horrified at seeing her that way.

She was on an Ahlzeimer's dedicated floor. Each patient had their own quirks and behaviors. There was the opera-singing lady. The guffawing man who reminded me of Ed McMahon. There was the lady screaming swears in French. Then, there was the lady who would scream in English and hallucinate these crazy adventures, and it would usually end with many nurses restraining her in her room.

Time goes by as a new mom,

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