On the Other Side of the Wall: The First Morning

   The morning after Grandma moved in with us my two younger siblings and I sat around the kitchen table doing our school work. Grandma wandered around the house muttering to herself. Mom tried to get her to sit down at intervals so she could rest for a while but eventually she would get up so she could resume wandering. After a while Mom told her loudly, so she could hear well enough to understand, to stay in her chair. We could tell she did not appreciate being told to stay put. Maybe she thought she was being yelled at when Mom thought she couldn't hear her properly. Or maybe she didn't like being told what to do. She argued back, pouted, then got up again to keep walking. No wonder she was skin and bones. She never rested. We sat at the table, rolled our eyes at each other, and continued our lessons.

  We made it through that first morning with Grandma wandering around the house feeling a little lost. But we were all a little lost; it was early days in the realization of what Alzheimer's truly was.
   Up to this point we had experienced Grandma's condition from a sort of window shopping point of view. We looked in on her. We saw the disease. We carried it around on our own shoulders for a little while and then left it on the rack. It was a totally different experience to take IT home and keep IT. Now we actually had to care for it. But how?