ALZHEIMER'S BLOGGING:

I sit here quietly blogging, now that my house is quiet. My 99 yr old grandmother and my Aunt Peg, and my parents were in town for a week. Along with my daughter Kristina with her husband and three kids. The house was messy, and noisy, just like I like it. Signs of life you know. My daughter left with her crew a couple of hours ago and it is lonely again. But I reflect to the last few days of wiping runny noses, and spending endless hours at the park feeding the ducks.

As we sat around the Thanksgiving table, passing the food, and helping the little ones eat, my mind wondered off to a different time. To a time when I was the young parent and my father and mother in law had us over to their home with the wonderful smells of their cooking, and they were in charge. I was to young to even know what was expected as I would take care of my children, expecting a feast and taking for granted their hospitality.

I must have A.D.D. as my mind would go off into another direction, and it was the year 2002. We had moved into Dads home a few months before this so we could help dad, and that Thanksgiving I remember sitting in the living room of his house while he pointed to the furniture and telling me they belonged to him. It seemed like that was a time Dad couldn't remember if he was at home and we were always trying to convince him he was.

It was the Thanksgiving year, 2003 that we spent our first Thanksgiving day without him. We had just moved to Phoenix and all my kids were in town. We decided to make an adventure and go see the Grand Canyon. Only Dad couldn't come with us. So we had to make arrangements for Dad to be at a nursing home for a couple of days.

Life is so full of disappointments. It hurts to think of how this terrible disease took my father in law away from us. Yet this man was heaven sent as he taught us about life, commitment and love. They say in every storm cloud to look for the silver lining. We found ours.

Remember to the world you are but just one person. But to that special person you may be their world.

Sincerely,
Marie Fostino
Alzheimer's A Caretakers Journal
Seaboard Press An Imprint of James A Rock Pub., Co.
www.mariefostino.com
www.mariefostino.blogspot.com