This week, my dear aunt has been visiting. It has been a short visit and I feel sad about that. On top of that, I also am grieving losing her. She is right in front of me, yet she is not there. And it makes my heart ache.
After losing my mother at six, my aunt was my confidante. In my years growing up, she was the only one I could talk to about my mother and not be told to stop. She would listen and she understood that I needed to know things. She held me while I cried. And cried, and cried. She told me about my mother. She showed me pictures of my mother. Of my mother and me. She took care of me. She loved me like a mother.
My aunt has always been an incredibly loving yet morose person and my visit with her this time has been eye-opening in that she is beginning to face her own mortality head-on. She has early-onset Alzheimer's and she is in the stage where she knows her symptoms. It is so hard to watch, when she can't find her water glass, her (eye)glasses, she frantically searches for something because she thinks she has misplaced it, when the truth is that it is sitting exactly where she knew it was just five minutes ago. She is disabled in a way that does not really get recognized. It's hard to put a finger on. She cannot remember how old my kids are. She can't remember what we did yesterday. She does still remember me, thank goodness. That is a huge blessing. And, when I talk of something that happened long ago, a huge smile appears on her face, partly because she can remember it.
My aunt is very smart. She was a nurse in a cardiac office before she had kids. She used to be a fantastic photographer. She introduced me to the Pink Panther movies and has been one of the few constants in my life. She was published in medical journals in regards to Pacemakers. She exuded love. She is funny, creative and so incredibly loving. Yet all that is being undermined by this deterioration of her memory and this horrible disease that is taking hold of her. She has told me many times in the past two days that you are born with Alzheimer's and that it just gets increasingly worse. I probably have it, and this will too be my path. My maternal grandfather had it, but he had a much later onset than my Aunt Diane. This early onset (she is in her 60's) is so disturbing to me and it leaves the person and all his/her loved ones completely powerless.
I have known and still know people who are oblivious to life, to so many things. It seems to me that the oblivious ones should be the ones targeted with this disease. But that is not how things work. This disease knows no boundaries and it is so painful to see someone who was so in tune to others' pain, so empathetic, so alive despite all the struggles she has had, to be diminished so immensely.
She is right in front of me. I can reach out and hug her. But there is a part of her that I can't reach anymore. And the absence of her makes my heart ache.
