Page 17 of Scandalously Yours

“Anything interesting on the tube?” I was trying to find anything to get him talking.

“Meh,” he said, but that was it.

“Then why do you watch it?” I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders and I thought that would be it, but he answered me, anyway. “The news is ever changing. It doesn’t matter what happened a day or two ago. I don’t remember and no one else does either.”

“I see.” And for once, I truly meant it. I wasn’t just placating him like everyone else did.

“Do you know who I am?”

He shrugged, then replied, “No, and it’s better that way.”

Maybe for him, but not for me. I didn’t press him any further. I just grabbed one of the afghans my grandmother liked to crochet, and I covered myself with it. I then cocked my head to the side of the pillow and stared at the man I had wanted to see more than all others. It was so hard to wrap my head around everything still because he looked so much like the grandfather I adored, but while he was there in body, he certainly wasn’t in spirit.

I’d been volunteering with the Alzheimer’s Foundation for several years now. I have done everything I could to raise awareness, and two years ago, I began work on a clinical trial that would hopefully be able to help others recognize the warning signs so they could seek help sooner. There were ten main ones, and looking back at my high school years, I should’ve recognized a few of them, even though he really took a turn for the worse once I went away to college.

My grandfather would forget simple stuff like dates and appointments, but I had attributed it to his getting older. After all, it happened to everyone once in a while. Hell, I would sometimes forget tests or appointments and I was seventeen years old at the time. I had also chalked up his difficulty in concentrating on everything going on. My grandmother had just had a hip replacement surgery and he was stressed with taking care of her. My mother even noticed it and moved in for a few weeks to help out around the house. Then there had been other things that seemed normal including forgetting things such as rules to a card game or leaving the grocery list my grandmother would make at home.

With everything going on around that time, I wasn’t surprised when he missed my birthday. “I’m sorry, baby girl. I’ll make it up to you,” he’d promised, but I never held him to it.

“It’s okay. Just remember that my graduation is in a month,” I had reminded him, and he had nearly forgotten that, too. My grandmother was just finally getting back on her feet again so I was sure the workload on him would lessen.

Right before I had gone off to college, he started experiencing issues with his vision. He was tested for glaucoma but turned out not to have it. The doctor did prescribe him glasses, but after a few days, he refused to wear them. I was getting ready to move to the city, so I hadn’t hassled him. From there, things started to go downhill. My grandfather was usually the life of the party. The man could talk, and he had hometown tales for almost anything. My mother had remarked once or twice that he was finally starting to settle down as he neared retirement. She hadn’t been too concerned, and neither had my father. I would often try to talk to him when I would stop by for a visit, although most of the time I had to resort to phone calls because my school load was crazy busy, and that was even before medical school. He’d forget words or use the wrong one, but he tended to speak in his own language for most of my life, so it too was ignored.

Eventually, he began losing things and couldn’t retrace his steps. “The funniest thing happened,” my grandmother had told me during one of those calls. “Your grandfather went into the kitchen and made himself a sandwich, then returned to the living room and forgot where he had put it after making it.”

It wasn’t funny now looking back on that conversation because that was a classic warning sign of Alzheimer’s. Poor judgment and changes in both his mood and personality followed until he began withdrawing from social events altogether. My parents had been extremely worried, so they had taken him in for a series of tests. By that time, he had been diagnosed and it pained me to think how we had all contributed to withholding treatment. The doctors were trying to help him now, but his symptoms couldn’t be reversed.

“I wish I would’ve been here to help you,” I said aloud. With early detection, we might’ve been able to give him a few more years of independence and he might’ve even been eligible to participate in one of those clinical trials I was heavily involved in.

I hadn’t been there to help him, but I would do my damnedest to make sure I could help others like him before they ended up a shell of themselves on the couch, watching the news all day, not because it was interesting but because it would stop others from asking him questions he couldn’t answer later.

“Come on outside, Ale,” my mother said as she passed through the living room and saw me curled up in the chair. “We want to hear all about New York City.”

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