Three Generations, One Memory

Three generations. One disease. One moment remembered.

My little brother has Alzheimer’s.

Recently, he asked, “Do you remember when Grandad pushed Mom?”

I didn’t.

Struggling to find his words, he told the story—a moment I didn’t know I had lost.

For 60 years, my mother had not seen or spoken with her father.

Their reunion was unexpected. After he was diagnosed, the last of his many wives dropped him off at our house. By default, my mom became a caregiver to a man she did not know.

Until my brother reminded me, I had no memory of an altercation in the living room.

My mom wanted her father to take a shower. He refused.

He was six-foot-four and very thin.

My mom had post-polio syndrome and was unsteady on her feet.

He shoved her. She fell back against the wall.

My father stepped in.

He pinned my grandfather against the wall and held him by the shoulders, yelling.

It was the 1970s.

This was our first experience caring for someone with dementia—or “senile dementia,” as it was called.

No guidelines.

No understanding of what was happening.

No support groups.

Eventually, he was moved into a nursing home.

Life moved forward.

We thought that chapter had closed.

Twenty years later, the disease returned with my father’s diagnosis.

Twenty-five years after that, my younger brother was diagnosed.

And he is the one who remembered.

A man whose memory and speech are often hard to find

reached into his mindand pulled out a moment I had lost.

When our family was first introduced to this disease,

We had no idea it intended to stay.

That afternoon was the beginning.

Our grandfather is losing control.

Our father istepping in.

A future none of us could imagine.

My brother remembered.

Three generations.

One disease.

One remembered moment.