I had been writing on this blog about wanting to erase memories so it won’t hurt anymore. I wanted to do an Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and be done with it, this grief.
On the flip side, there is this immeasurable pain because of losing one’s memories. This article in Washington Post reminded me of the long goodbye that comes with Alzheimer’s disease. My maternal grandma died of it in her 70s. My aunt has it now. Her memories of who she is and where she is come and go like the tide but it is less predictable.
I remember my cousins and I had our summer vacations with my grandparents so they would have someone with them in their home, even for just a few months, since my aunt (one of the twins) living closest to them cannot watch over them 24/7 as she also had a big household to manage. We didn’t know it at that time but my grandma’s AD had already set in when she became Cruella. We thought she was just growing more cantankerous as time went on. It came to a point that she banished my cousins from the house for some small reason that triggered her temper. My cousin and my older sister packed their bags and retreated to my aunt’s house. Later that day or a day after, my grandpa went after them and asked for forgiveness from his grandchildren (!) on behalf of his wife for receiving that kind of treatment. My cousins and sister cried because they couldn’t imagine our weak, old, white-haired grandpa chasing after them and yet he did. It was the only reason they went back–out of love for my grandpa.
Anyway, that was one of the early signs of AD that we didn’t know about. Later on my grandma got worse, to the point that one of my aunts who lived in Chicago had to come home here in the Philippines to take care of them because we couldn’t handle them. This aunt built a giant crib for my grandma because she escaped the house at 2 am to wander. Prior to this aunt taking over, I remember my cousins, sisters and I had to take turns in watching over my grandma at night so she wouldn’t go out of the house while we slept. We devised some booby traps/alarms to wake us up if she did. One time she was brought home with a lot of bruises, maybe she was side-swept by a car or she fell while walking in the darkness because she wanted to go to church at 4 am. There were also shouting matches, but mostly it was her shouting at us angrily. She thought we were some of her enemies from way back when she was young. She no longer had an idea of the time and space she occupied. She was no longer in our reality. She was already transported to the 1930s or 1940s. She was digging up her grudges, throwing at us her axes she had ground for so many years.
She also developed Parkinsons so taking care of her was harder. She was reduced to becoming a baby again, with stuffed toys around her, wetting her bed that we had to put diapers on her, and spent her days staring at the ceiling. Her mind was locked away somewhere we could no longer reach.
And my grandpa, who had loved her “up to the high heavens” as he told us, watched helplessly as the love of his life slowly slipped away and descended into a vortex of memories that were being sucked down into hell. It was a long goodbye for him. One time, because my grandma’s motor skills have gone downhill, she slipped and my grandpa sacrificed himself by catching her to break her fall with his body. He was in his 80s. He broke his hip bones and had to undergo surgery.
My grandma, who raised 13 children and worked for the family as a tradeswoman, was reduced to being like a doll staring at the ceiling at the end of her days. She had no emotions, no understanding of what was happening, no recollection of who she is, no idea of love and happiness. She was like a blank canvas.
It was a long goodbye. You helplessly watch somebody slip away. For someone who is losing her memories, her mental faculties, it’s a long slow death. It’s a snail’s pace to nothingness.
So would I want that for myself? As somebody who wanted to rid herself of memories so that it won’t hurt anymore, I don’t want to descend into that same path my grandma, my maternal aunt, and paternal uncle had gone. I am taking back what I said a few months ago about erasing memories. It’s the memories who make us what we are now. Those memories have broken us and built us to who we are today. And without those, who are we then? Am I still me if I can’t remember my name? Is it still worth living if I no longer know what love and pain are? If I don’t have any memory of being happy and sad? It’s like in the Pixar movie Inside Out, what are we without those marbles of memories? Who are we?
So just like that, I would just have to endure the pain, the hollowness, until I become bigger so the ball of grief inside me would no longer hit my walls frequently. It’s better to have those memories of having loved people who didn’t love me back than not remembering anything, of not having any memories of those in my life. Metaphorically, it’s just like what happened to my grandma, who ended up just staring at the ceiling and had no idea of what is it to be alive.
