- Home
- /
- Latest Voices
- /
- Page 2
Latest Voices
Whose Memories?
“Here are some things Dad brought back from moving Grandma,” my mother said, as she placed a box on my dining table. It was filled with objects from my grandmother’s apartment. My father and aunt had just spent a week relocating their mother to a memory care facility and, having little time and many items to sort, had culled out a few things that they thought might be meaningful to me.
I looked through the box. It contained primarily framed photos, most of which were of my growing family in recent years: pictures and holiday cards I’d sent to keep
Broken Neck, Unbroken Spirit
The sun is as warm as I remember it. I’d never minded that hot ball of heat, even when it beat down on me during many a long summer, as I worked outside with my hands.
My hands. I look down at them now, my fingers giving the illusion they’re gripping the little knobs on the handrests of my power wheelchair, but I recall the occupational therapist placing them there back in the rehabilitation facility’s rec hall an hour ago.
A Mile Marker in the Dark
The elderly doctor sitting in for my husband’s young radiation oncologist knew what we needed to hear: “Pancreatic cancer likes to come back early if it’s going to come back. The longer it’s gone, the less chance you’ll see it again. By two years, there is very little likelihood it will return.”
Suddenly, we had a signpost.
Maman’s Voyage
My mother stood at the edge of dementia, a wide and terrifying river. She turned around, glancing back at me with her blue eyes sparkling, her arms outstretched. And then she waded in. I could not reach her in time to keep her safely on shore.
In the early stages, there were days of clarity when Maman would lift her face to the sun, wave in recognition to those of us she’d left on shore, beckoning us to join her. But it was not long before swift currents ensnared her, taking her farther and farther away. Her emotions and memories
My Family History of Dementia
Many people are afraid of developing dementia, which is increasingly common as we live ever longer. I have a compelling reason to harbor that fear.
My paternal grandmother developed dementia in her early sixties. The diagnosis was made without any of today’s imaging and biomarker techniques, but the course of her decline, it’s clear in retrospect, was typical for Alzheimer’s. Luckily, she never lost her sweetness or her Southern-ness: she remained hospitable and cheerful to the end, politely hiding her pills under her linen napkin. One afternoon during a drive through the rural South, she kept promising us that the
A Disease with Two Victims
One of the first house calls I made during my internal medicine residency many years ago was to visit Mr. R: a 70-year-old veteran, retired electrician, devoted grandfather, and church volunteer who’d shown signs of memory loss for six years. His forgetfulness was initially dismissed as “senior moments.” Then he forgot his wife’s birthday—something he’d never done in 40 years.
The turning point came when he got lost after picking up his grandson from school. They were finally found two hours away, where a flustered Mr. R had been driving in circles. Taking away his car keys was traumatic, and
The Topaz Ring
On fancy occasions, I wear a topaz ring—a large, pale-yellow gem in fine filigree setting. My paternal grandmother had purchased this ring for herself. I, being the oldest grandchild and also sharing her birth month, received this treasure as a young adult.
Grandma Fogarty had died when I was only five. When I was young, I remember waking up after naps at her house to find M&M’s waiting for me on the bedside table in a small plastic medicine cup. She was quiet and kind. I vividly remember her wake, in a dim room with plush red carpet and fancy
The Sudden Storm
(This story arose from a prompt to write a brief memoir inspired by an excerpt from a poem. The excerpt I chose, from Hafizah Augustus Geter’s poem “Paula,” was “a storm suddenly opens its jaw.”)
The luncheon started innocently enough. My friends and I were talking about indisposed spouses, some temporarily, others more seriously—like milk that had started to spoil but was still potable. Mine was heading closer toward curdled each day, but in small increments. Even so, thoughts of the future were harder to entertain.
Grandma’s Cinnamon Buns
Grandma was famous in our family for her cinnamon buns. Born in 1900, she was of the age of never following a recipe. My sister and I would ask her how to make cinnamon buns, and all we got was “watch me.” We wish we had watched more closely and taken notes.
When Grandma announced she was moving to assisted living, we were surprised, as she appeared to still have good health other than somewhat weak legs and poor hearing. Her cognition seemed fine, and we never worried about her living alone. But now in her eighties, her older siblings
