I really hate being emotional. I want desperately, sometimes, to just shut it all off; the ‘gift’ passed down our family line, the hiraeth (longing, in Welsh) I feel every day for so many things, the great and terrible sadness that doesn’t in fact, get better with time.

I’ve been working on a project coming out through Needfire later this month. It touches on a subject extremely close to me, one that is still raw and occasionally weeping, even now after so many years have passed. It brings me to what is probably my greatest fear, which you get as confession, this last week of the Blogdom exercise.

I am terrified that I will develop Alzheimer’s disease, to the point of being phobic about it.

I am not afraid of dying, don’t get me wrong. I am afraid of becoming lost long before the Lady takes me on the next journey. I am scared I’ll someday look at my daughters and see strangers. Of looking in the mirror and not recognizing the person staring back at me.

Of not having the memories that keep me moving forward.

The chances of Alzheimer’s developing in either myself or my girls is fairly high. My grandmother had three brothers who were either diagnosed outright or during autopsy. One of her sisters had begun showing early signs, but was already well into her eighties and passed away before full onset. Another sister lived in the fog for over a decade. I saw too much of what they went through, of how they were, to be anything but fearful. And I’ll tell you, I thank all my gods and my gran’s that she didn’t hold on.

While my mother claims that my gran suffered Alzheimer’s for over ten years before she died (and to keep from rocking the boat, I agreed) I’m sure it was simply the stress and exhaustion of practically raising two pre-teen boys in her late 60s, on top of keeping house for mom as well as her own home. I know the real symptoms began showing themselves in ’97 and by late 2000 Gran was diagnosed, and passed away in August of 2004. She didn’t fight it long. She waited only eleven months to join my grandfather.

While I was digging out this piece that I wrote after I got the call about Gran having died, and finding an appropriate picture to go with it, my playlist came around to a song that almost inevitably comes on when I’ve been thinking about them a lot – Jordan Hill’s Remember Me This Way. It played while I wrote the piece, and has even come on the radio when we’ve gone out to the cemetery. Gran loved the song, partly perhaps because she’d begun to lose what she tried to hold on to. Her memories.

For Grandma Shirley

In my mind, I see them, meeting at a gate.

The gate is under an arbor, overgrown with ivy, and surrounded by a fence. Along the fence grows low shrubs covered over in pale pink, blush roses. He stands tall, proud and handsome. Teasing blue eyes sparkle in the moonlight.

He’s been waiting for her. She’s been looking for him.

She walks slowly at first, her steps pained and unsure. Is this the man she seeks? He looks so different than she recalls. More like the man she first knew.

As she draws near, her steps become lighter – her back straighter. Her eyes begin to dance as she recognizes the young man at the gate. As her hand reaches for his, the moonlight touches the pale skin and smoothes the lines away. Yes, this is he. He opens the gate for her, and she steps through – into his arms and they embrace. They’ve been apart a very long time now.

Beyond him she can see others; a young man – tall, brash and handsome as the dickens, holding the hands of two little girls who look so very much alike, but not quite identical. She smiles. She remembers now. Those three – they share a birthday. He came for them when it was their time. There, beside them – a man in a wheelchair. She remembers him… mischief maker. Did he really think he was getting away with all those tricks? She was on to him!

Smiling around at the faces she’s so longed to see, she finally turns to the one she’s longed for the most.

“My Wilfred,” she whispers, as they walk into the moonlight together.

Whatever it takes, at the next house we’ll have a garden gate, the wild yellow roses, and some of Gran’s Morden Blush roses. And of course, we’ll have Gran and Grump, Uncle Butch, Brittany, Lori and Uncle Moe, too.

(Image copyright Vaughn James, used via sxc.hu)