Who Is Left to Remember

There is a saying that in every family, one sibling will attend all the others’ funerals, one will go first and attend none, and the last survivor will have no one left to attend theirs.

I don’t know who first said it, but I think about it often.

I was the fifth of six children; three of my five siblings have Alzheimer’s.

If I died tomorrow, only two of my siblings would stand at my funeral. The other three would not understand or remember that I was gone.

If they asked about me, I would hope someone would tell them I was traveling—that I loved them and missed them—rather than burden them with a moment of sorrow they would soon forget.

One quiet mercy of Alzheimer’s is this: they do not carry the memory of a death. There is no reason to tell them. No reason to make them relive their grief even for a moment.