Generational Alzheimer's

When my brother’s password reset hinged on the name of his first pet, we discovered how fragile ordinary memories can be. The milestones remain, but the small details—the cat’s name, the everyday moments—are the first to disappear. When dementia erases the past, someone else has to hold it.

When my grandfather, lost to Alzheimer’s, quietly took apart a sink to retrieve my sister’s contact lens, we saw him clearly for the first time. For one brief moment, he was not a burden—he was a hero.

In a family of six siblings, three now live with Alzheimer’s. A reflection on what it means to face mortality when memory is already slipping—and the quiet mercy that dementia sometimes spares loved ones the repeated pain of loss.

“How old was Dad when he got Alzheimer’s?” “Sixty-two.” “Good,” he said. “I’m sixty-three.”

In 1990, my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. We lived together for years, yet we never talked about what the diagnosis meant to him. Looking back, the silence around his illness is what I grieve most.

We share the same genes, the same history, and many of the same habits. The outcomes, however, are not shared—and there’s no way to know which side of the line you’ll land on.