Jean110 made me thinkJean110 wrote an interesting journal entry that made me think about my grandmother and an experience from my childhood.

When I was in grade school the most amazing teacher I've ever had, Mr. Gary Canode of Yuma, AZ (deceased, sadly), took our combination class of third, fourth, and fifth graders to a local hospice with people of various disabilities. I believe the idea was for us to see that people that are different from us in a plethora of ways are deserving of our compassion and empathy, not ridicule and derision.

So the woman a classmate and I were grouped with, and I'm sorry to say I don't remember her name after so many years, was suffering from Alzheimer's and as c...

Jean110 made me thinkJean110 wrote an interesting journal entry that made me think about my grandmother and an experience from my childhood.

When I was in grade school the most amazing teacher I've ever had, Mr. Gary Canode of Yuma, AZ (deceased, sadly), took our combination class of third, fourth, and fifth graders to a local hospice with people of various disabilities. I believe the idea was for us to see that people that are different from us in a plethora of ways are deserving of our compassion and empathy, not ridicule and derision.

So the woman a classmate and I were grouped with, and I'm sorry to say I don't remember her name after so many years, was suffering from Alzheimer's and as children we just didn't fully understand what we were supposed to do. How are we supposed to cope with a person that doesn't remember what happened 15 minutes ago?

So we did what we thought was right. We tried to engage her in conversations but it was hard to keep anything straight. Frequently she would lapse into silence and just look off into the distance, so we would draw pictures for her, things that would keep still in time.

We did this for a year, but I think Mr. Canode saw that while we may have been learning to be better human beings, it was also incredibly stressful for us to try and learn to deal with what we were facing. We were all just so young.

As bad as it was, and it did some scarring because I'm incredibly afraid of my family members or myself falling into that pit of lost memories, one of the most incredible moments we had with her was that one visit she pulled out a picture we had drawn and thanked us for it. She had somehow remembered us and it made the anguish worthwhile.

My grandmother on my Mom's side is suffering from Alzheimer's too. I've only met her once in 2011 and it was heartbreaking having a "conversation" (this was in Japan and I don't speak a lick of the language) with her only to realize she doesn't know who I am despite being told repeatedly.

She often moved from knowing who my Mom is and being happy to see her after so many years, to yelling at her for marrying an American 35 years ago, to talking to her like she's still a little girl and singing children's songs with her like it's 1955 again.

I'm amazed at the fortitude my aunt and her family have had to care for her all these years.

I know that my Mom worries that she'll suffer the same fate, and I worry about it on occasion too.