I said goodbye to my grandma on March 7, 2017. Although, of course, I had been saying goodbye to her long before the day her body finally caught up with her mind. 

My long goodbye with grandma began more years ago that I can even remember, with the prodromal signs of emerging Alzheimer’s disease. Thankfully, she had grandpa there to keep her at home until the very end. 

I prefer to remember the good memories though.. 

When I was little I spent a lot of time with my grandma. When I’d get mad at her I’d tell her to “go home!” Grandma was always there for me though and would continue to babysit no matter how many times I told her to leave. 

Grandma baked 14 loaves of bread every Monday. She taught me how to bake bread and would even let me roll out my own mini loaf. I found out when she passed that she’d actually been trading out my loaves for her own all those years (I would roll mine around on her living room carpet). 

As an adult I finally learned how to make her secret cinnamon roll recipe but by that time she wasn’t quite sure on how much she used of each ingredient so, to this day, nobody makes them quite like grandma. 

When I’d get mad at my parents I would sneak out my bedroom window and go to grandmas for several hours until she’d calmed down enough to go home. Grandma would listen and always took my side. Sometimes I’d cry myself to sleep on her davenport. When I’d wake up she’d have supper ready. 

I always loved Christmas at grandmas too. All the aunts and uncles would come over and we’d have a family meal and open gifts. I always said I wanted at least 7 kids so I’d have a lot of people around to love me when I’m old too. 

Alzheimer’s is a rollercoaster; there are surprises at every turn. Things you have no concept that you would ever know, it is the steepest of learning curves, delivering changes and challenges at every turn. 

But there is also something else, something that people embarking on this journey need to know. 

Some things are so deeply engrained into us that they are beyond the realms of mental capacity, or cognitive ability.

People like to talk about how a person with Alzheimer’s ‘dies’ before they are actually dead. And in some ways that is true, the coherent version of the person you knew morphs into someone different. 

But this different person, the person they become, is still woven together with the essence of who they were, their core is still there. 

Having seen my grandma through every stage of the condition that eventually claimed her life, I know for certain that her selfhood remained. 

Grandma got her first grandchild towards the end of her life. I would bring Brantley to visit her. She’d hold him and her face would just light up. She’d look at him and say, “I love you”. And that is what is left when all else begins to fade. Love. Love is what remains.