The faded black-and-white picture of a smiling, black-haired,Japanese woman sat on a broken table, in a cracked frame. Faded and cracked like a lifetime of memories that were slowly forgotten.
The smiling woman from the picture now lay frail with silver hair, her eyes unfocused as if she were living in some distant reality. It was difficult to accept that this drone had replaced my grandmother, and even more difficult to reach the unharmed fragments of her slowly failing mind.
Doctors said it was Alzheimer’s, described as a progressive and fatal disease that slowly deteriorates one’s mind and body, causing memory loss and difficulty functioning in everyday life. A form of dementia with no cure.
“Help me! HELP ME!” cries of broken English rang out. They still made me jump, although they’d become a regular occurrence in this house.
Rushing to her room, I saw her wobbling as she stood, supported by the bars of the hospital bed that had been brought in when her illness had suddenly worsened.
“I need to go home, help me, I need to go home.” The mumbling, burdened by a heavy Japanese accent, took me a moment to understand.
“Grandma, you are home.”
“I need to go home,” as tears streamed down her face. She had no recollection of where she was.
“You are home, please lay down,” I said, taking her hand and trying not to show that I was utterly terrified.
“No! I need to go home!” she cried out. As she pulled her hand away and struggled to move, she lost her balance and fell.
An hour later, when she was back in her bed and calmed down by my mother, I sat in the corner of her room, watching her and wondering how to help her.
“Anna, come here dear,” she beckoned.
Anna? She said my name? I stepped towards her and she held out a frail hand and rested it on my arm for a moment.
“My precious granddaughter,” she said with a smile on her face, her eyes falling to her bedside table.
There was a book on the table. The text was written in Japanese, but I remembered the story from the many times she’d read it to me.
It was a Japanese fairy tale, about a princess who is a lost angel, searching for her way home.
Lost, looking for a way home, like my grandmother who was lost, looking for her home in a world that she couldn’t remember.
“I love you, Anna,” she smiled. It was the smile from the picture in the cracked frame, only this smile was perfect. It was the smile I grew up seeing.
I struggled not to cry as I watched her fall asleep, knowing that when she woke up I would be lucky if she remembered my name, let alone this conversation. Knowing that no matter how many times I wished it, she’d never get better.
Her moments of clarity reminded me that those closest to her would remain in her heart, even while her mind and memories were slowly being stolen by the most devious of diseases. After all, the heart remembers everything the mind cannot.
