A Maze of Memories

Anonymous

My grandmother is lost in her own mind. She has wandered down a maze entrenched in darkness, and she cannot find her way out. Every day she goes a little deeper, not knowing which way is right or left. She is stumbling down the hallways of her consciousness, trying to find something familiar to hold onto. Some days are worse than others. Some days her world falls apart, and she is forced to wander. Wander our house, wander her thoughts, wander down memory lane. Except now all the houses on memory lane are abandoned and flowers no longer bloom on the side of the road. She can’t find anything that makes her happy, that makes her sad, that makes her feel something. She mistakes my father for her late husband. She mistakes Lutz for Orlando, where she lived before she couldn’t anymore. All the bright colors that painted her reality have run together and coated everything in monotonous gray. She lashes out, and cries, and is silent because she isn’t sure which call for help will get God’s attention. She is drowning in the gray that sticks to everything. She can’t find a landmark to guide her and she is getting desperate for something, anything to remember. My mother and I are left alone to deal with the impossibility of handling the disease that is eating her alive.

I am helpless, my mother is tired. My grandmother is lost. And yet I am holding onto the fact that at the end of this maze is a wide-open space filled with wild flowers and daises where everything is bright and bursting with color and nothing hurts. My grandmother will find herself. My mother will be happy. I will not be alone in the burden of dementia.