Egad. How to deal with Alzheimer's disease. Forgive me, I may rant as I seem to have misplaced the manual on this disease. I guess we deal however we can.

The first time that I dealt with Alzheimer's was as as a pre-teen. Around the time I was 12 my grandmother Milma had started to show the early signs. In the beginning she would forget our names, or where she had placed certain items. It started so slowly that it seemed as though sometimes she was just having a rough day. Not enough sleep perhaps. Then the lapses grew longer. There were times when we went to visit that she didn't know who we were. I think it was harder for my mother. She would look directly into my grandmother's face. "Ma! It's me! Your daughter!" My mother would raise her voice as if my grandmother was losing her hearing instead of her mind. My grandmother looked sad. As though she had done something wrong. Sometimes she would get it. "Oh you're Erin! Murlene's daughter." Sometimes she would break into her native Finnish. Most of the time we just tried to make her laugh and she just tried to make us eat. On the very bad days she would yell at my sister and denounce her as a relation. Something in her had decided that my sister had injured her. My sister withdrew, not knowing how to redeem herself.

When she was finally hospitalized my mother went to visit her regularly. Each time she went I think she broke down a little more. Dealing with Alzheimer's is unique because you are losing your loved one a little bit at a time. You know that the end is near, you have been given that knowledge beforehand. Prepared, you try to make the most out of the time that you have left. But on some days, your loved one has already left you. No matter how hard you try to connect and share the memories of life together, there are days when your loved one recoils and doesn't know your name. You try to reconnect and every time that you do, you start from square one all over again.

My grandmother was raised by farmers in Northern Minnesota. Her father was known by everyone as a tyrant. He would not even allow the children to go to church. My grandmother sued him for the right to worship and won. This same woman, this independent fighter, was later reduced to someone who didn't know where she was most of the time. "Why am I here?" "Why can't I go home?" She would ask for my grandfather who had died years before. To explain is to reopen the wounds. To create fresh grief. To try to give understanding seemed cruel. In the end we just tried to make her comfortable and happy. It didn't matter if she remembered our names. When we brought her drawings, she smiled. We hung them in her hospital room and hoped that they would make her smile the next day. We brushed her hair and told her we loved her.

As for our grief, we all dealt with it in our own ways. Sometimes we cried. Sometimes we laughed. There are no rules. If you can smile, you do. If you can't, you try to. In the end, you share your memories with each other and let go.

Learn more about this author, Erin Colligan.
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