Generational Alzheimer's

“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.