Dear Mema, 

Even though I see you and can touch you and feel you with me, I still miss you. I miss the old you, the one who knew my name, the one who would take me to pick buttercups from the garden, the one who loved my dad and all of your other children. I will admit, I hate coming to visit you now. I can’t stand seeing you like that. Over the past four years, I’ve seen you slowly go downhill from the fun-loving, spoiling her grandkids, caring grandma that you always were when I was growing up, to the woman who can’t form sentences and doesn’t even recognize her own family. 

I know the anger and hatred is not really you speaking. I know the real you would never dream of speaking to anyone that way. I just have to remind myself that it’s not really you. I’m going to remember you the way you used to be, I promise. I will not let the way you act alter my feelings and love for you because I know it’s not you. 

I think it’s even harder for me to comprehend right now that I could tell you this to your face, but you wont understand a word I say, and you won’t know who I am. You see me growing up and came to graduation, and see me progressing on my life’s journey, though you see it you don’t know it. I would give anything for you to be your old self just for five minutes so I could tell you how much I love and miss you. There’s no way to let you know how much you have influenced me in my life. I just wish I would have known when I was younger that Alzheimer’s Disease would have taken the real you away from me; maybe I could have remembered the last day I spent with you while you were still in your right mind. 

I wish there were a way I could tell you I love you and you would understand. 

I love you and miss you and I am sorry that you can’t comprehend that anymore.

Your first Granddaughter,
Kristen, age 19