My Grandmother With Alzheimer’s Had A Lot Of Fun

My grandmother with Alzheimer’s had a lot of fun. When he was 90 years old, he began to have blackouts. Little trifles without importance. At 92, she began to forget the last thing she had done, but she did retain the memory of having been involved in a task that she had more or less liked. He died at the age of 96 and in that lapse of time, his Alzheimer’s didn’t progress much further, but it did advance far enough to ask you the same question four or five times.

She was a great cook when she was still able to fend for herself. In his later years he used a walker to be able to walk. Various knee and hip operations restricted his mobility, which did not prevent him from pacing from one side to the other.  His energy amazed us all. She aroused admiration in those who knew her. And it is that my grandmother, without Alzheimer’s and with him, was a fighter throughout her life.

My grandmother liked vermouth

When the disease began to manifest, I already had my own driving license and car. She lived alone, but Alzheimer’s did not prevent her from living normally. A girl kept him company at home and he was quite self-sufficient. However, he loved coming home to eat with my parents and me. So, at noon, around half past twelve, I always went to look for her. In addition, as usual, we would walk for at least an hour with the car.

She loved to look out the window and see the landscape, especially the Mediterranean landscape. We toured part of the island of Mallorca every time we walked. We even went to his favorite restaurant to “make the vermouth.” And after this detour around the island, we would return to my parents’ house to eat. “Where have you been?” Asked his son, my father. “I don’t know, but I liked it a lot,” he replied, smiling and happy. “Let’s see, what have we seen?” I asked him. “We have seen a lot of countryside … but I don’t remember, I think we have gone far,” she replied.

My grandmother with Alzheimer’s laughed at everything

The conversations with her were very fluid, we could talk about everything, but her short-term memory was failing. Despite this, when we repeated the same action several times, little by little it was remembered. Psychology was one of his pending subjects, he never remembered what it was for. I realized that the failures of his memory, plus the complexity of a specific subject, made it difficult to retain it. Nothing happened, she laughed and took it with good humor.

As much as I search my memory, I cannot find moments in which he would get angry about the malfunction of his memory. On the contrary, he found it very funny and said to me while looking at me: “Have you seen how people become? We don’t remember anything, ”and he laughed. She took it well and so did I. 

I recalled a scientific article by Niu and Álvarez-Álvarez (2016) in which they showed that among the European population over 65 years at least 4.4% had Alzheimer’s. What must someone feel that little by little stops remembering? What must a life be like without recent memories?

This article led me to search for more information about the care of Alzheimer’s patients in Spain and I found another one that addressed the resources available to us. In the article by the Martínez-Lage team (2018), it seems that in recent years Spain has seen an improvement in the diagnosis and follow-up of people with cognitive impairment and dementia. On the other hand, they highlight that it is necessary to improve the delay in diagnoses and better access to early care.

When we grandchildren take care of our grandparents

Taking care of my grandmother with Alzheimer’s taught me a very important lesson: although she did not remember what she had done, she did remember enjoying it. And this joy carried her through a good part of the day. I have noticed that many people believe that because our elders suffer from Alzheimer’s they will not feel pleasure when doing an activity, or directly, they wonder why they are going to carry it out if they do not remember.

And it is that the important thing is not if they will remember it or not, the important thing is that in the present moment they are happy. My grandmother, in a way, lived in the present, something that many of us try in our day-to-day lives and fail. He remembered his more distant past, but he did not remember what he did the day before and he knew that he would not remember what he was doing. So he could only fully enjoy what he was doing in the present regardless of the past or the future.

This lesson served me years later when I did my psychology internship in a nursing home. In fact, my biggest favorites were those with Alzheimer’s that hardly anyone cared about. I knew they wouldn’t remember anything, but they did enjoy the present. So I decided that while I was in the internship residence, all the older people would be my “grandparents” and my “grandmothers”. They were going to enjoy their life in the present.