A Walk to Remember

My grandmother was one of those women of which it could be said that "she enjoyed ill health". Whenever I would go over to visit and ask Granny how she was there was always a good chance that she would answer back with "I don't feel a bit good" and then she would expound on one various ailment or another. All things considered, she was actually in pretty good health most of her life but towards the end she ended up living in a nursing home because she just couldn't take care of herself any longer. After being admitted to the nursing home, Granny began to gradually lose herself completely and forgot who everyone around her was. It was very sad to see a woman who used to be as sharp as a tack gradually slip away to just being a shell of the person she used to be.

Alzheimer's is a disease that robs us of our loved ones while they're still right here with us. It takes the very essence of a person and melts it away until not only do they not know who you are but they don't even know themselves. It's beyond sad and it's tragic to watch someone slowly slip away while there is nothing you can do to stop it.

There is something you can do to help raise awareness and the funds to help fight this insidious disease, though, and that's to join the Alzheimer's Memory Walk. Held on a weekend morning in the fall, a typical walk is 2-3 miles and they are held in more than 600 communities around the country. Join or form a team, volunteer to help out, or sponsor someone else - all great ways to help to move a nation towards fighting Alzheimer's and keeping our loved ones with us in both mind and body for as long as we can.

I hope I get a postcard at least!

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I feel like my mind has decided that enough is enough and has gone on holiday leaving the rest of me to deal with life as best I can without it. Lately I can't seem to remember anything anymore - names, dates, titles of songs, what I was going to do when I walked in a room, what I had for breakfast, if I fed the cat - when I used to have what I thought was a very good memory. Leastways I think I did but I might very well have had a bad memory and forgotten that, too!

Take for example the fact that when I went to lunch with one of my good friends whom I have known for well over ten years, a friend who is very near and dear to my heart and whom I value greatly, we set about planning a date for our next get-together at the end of lunch; Rhonda pulled out her handy-dandy pocket calendar and started perusing dates about a month out and said that the 1st or the 29th looked like the most doable on her end and how did that work for me?

Obviously I didn't realize what the date was because my first reaction was, "well, we can't do the first because that's next week and we don't want to do two weeks in a row". Rhonda looked at me like I had lost my mind and said "I'm looking at March, it's February, remember?" February? When did it get to be February?? Oh ... last night at a minute after midnight ... that would be why I changed all the pages on the calendars ... duh!

Now as if that's not bad enough, I then said "okay, how about we do the 1st and have a day-before-your-birthday lunch?". Rhonda looked at me like I had lost my mind even further which led me to stammer "Your birthday is the 2nd right? Or is it on the 1st? It's written on my calendar at home but I can't remember!" Rhonda just sat there with a look of incredulity on her face as it appeared that I, her friend of well over ten years whom she holds near and dear to her heart and whom she values greatly, couldn't remember the date of her birthday while she had no trouble whatsoever in remembering mine.

Finally, after stuttering and stammering my way through a myriad of excuses, I came up with the best one that I could think of - "I know your birthday is on the 1st, I just thought I'd say it was the 2nd to give you one more day of being 50". As excuses go it was pretty darned lame and Rhonda didn't buy it for a minute. I can't say that I blame her, it was pretty pathetic.

After much profuse apologizing on my end, we decided on the 1st of March for our next get-together and Rhonda told me not to worry about forgetting the date of her birthday as she wouldn't remember that I had forgotten about it in 50 years. However, I can guarantee you that in February twenty years from now when we're sitting at lunch ordering our Senior Specials and planning the date of our next get-togehter she'll still remember the time I forgot when her birthday was!

I, on the other hand, will have forgotten all this by later tonight!