I had a longish talk with my grandmother this afternoon. We have all been worrying about my grandmother (who has Alzheimer�s and has declined rapidly in recent months) as my parents, who are the only family members who live near her and who are the ones who check in on her regularly, are in the middle of a month-long trip overseas visiting my brother and his family in Thailand and traveling in southeast Asia. I�ve been trying to call my grandmother every few days since my parents left on their trip. I tried calling her on her birthday earlier this month. I�ve tried over and over at all times of day, but she hasn�t picked up the phone.

An email from my mother this weekend compounded my worries about my grandmother by adding to them my mother�s worries. So today, when several attempts at calling her went unanswered, I called the front desk of the assisted living facility where she lives. There not only did I find someone who knew her and could tell me what she�d been doing, but I also found my grandma � she�s been hanging out in the lobby visiting with people and enjoying the social hour. They put her on the phone for me.

She was very confused � as I knew she would be. To have me calling downstairs was probably perplexing and it was probably a little noisy. She is easily distracted these days. She kept saying things that implied she thought I was someone else � which happens a lot lately. She confuses me and my mother and my aunt. She thought I was coming down this weekend and I had to tell her I wasn�t � she sounded so disappointed that I was half tempted to find a plane, although I really can�t afford it right now. Then she asked me about my sister (I don�t have a sister) and I had to stop and figure out who she thought I was. When I told her who I really was, she said she couldn�t hear me (which may have been true, but was also probably a coverup for her confusion). But she sounded very happy and she wanted to talk, so I suggested she tell me when she might be back in her room and I�d call her in a little while.

When I called back, she was much more lucid. Still confused on dates � her perception of time was the first part of her memory to go � she now knew who I was. I filled her in on what I knew of our far-flung family, told her about AJ and his science project, and, when she had a visitor at her door, I promised to call again soon.

It has occurred to me that talking to her has become more and more like conversing with someone who�s speaking in code. You have to get inside her head and figure out the points of confusion. She doesn�t mix up random things. She mixes things up categorically. She mixes up women in the family, not women outside of the family. She forgets where people are, but she remembers the collection of possible locations. Her sharpest memories are the oldest and she seems to have some trouble connecting the old with the recent, as if the memories of me when I was younger are of a different person than me as I am now. While it makes me really sad that I can�t talk to her about the things we�ve always talked about, I am also fascinated by the way the memory falls apart, by the things the mind holds onto and the things it loses its grip of.

What�s also striking is the way the changes in her memory change me too. We are remapping each other now. The memories of love and the knowledge of a shared history, even if we�re not sure what that history entailed, is what holds us together.

4 people said it like they meant it