What Began as a Game

What begins as a game….

Sometimes when we’re young, or even as adults, we want to play that childhood game of imagining “What superpowers would you like to have if you could have anything?” The first things that come to mind are usually invisibility, flying, reading minds, teleporting, the ability to see into the future. What about forgetting all the bad experiences we’ve had throughout our lives? That’s a superpower as well. Why not! 

But what if that superpower grew out of control? What if that game slowly became your reality? What if no one noticed at first, but your forgetting superpower ceased to remain silent and crept like the shadow you and the people around you could no longer avoid. 

If your superhero forgets, are you ready to be forgotten? Is anyone? Of course not!

Not only is being forgotten by someone whose life you are a part of not easy to accept, but it feels like the loss of their memory robs a little part of you as well. Because our existence depends on the memory of others. A little part of you is lost as someone’s memory of you fades. I don’t know if you agree with me, but look, it’s true. I have seen what happens to our lives if our loved ones don’t remember us.

The experience…

It all started with her losing her keys, leaving the stove on, forgetting to return home, forgetting how to cook her favorite dishes, consuming toxic products like kitchen products or ant poison, forgetting who she was and who we were, forgetting her own face in the mirror, being surprised to be told she was a mother and grandmother, and forgetting that she exists even while knowing she’s alive.

Little by little, she lost the ability to speak, although she makes herself understood. Her Catholicism remains intact, and every person she meets receives a blessing from her. Que mi Dios la guarde y la proteja. Amén (“May my God keep her and protect her. Amen.”)

The irony is that in the rush of losing her memories, she is returning to a past that is still present in her mind. She doesn’t know what time she’s in. She completely lost track of time more than 15 years ago. Since that cloud descended, it has hung constantly over her memory, her life, and withered the trunk of a tree that sustained the strength of the family… because yes, I write about Abuelita, an illiterate woman whose intelligence always allowed her to embrace life. Today she could be a master of time, of the eternal moment, and of all existence without needing to know tomorrow. Now she is a stranger to the immediate moment, a slave to time, and someone whose existence forgets yesterday.

Silently, she began to suffer without anyone noticing. As she tried to recall why she couldn’t remember things, her routine dwindled to one day at a time. 

Today, the monster in her head has nothing left to eat. Even as she is forgetting how to walk, I am still following in her footsteps, and the Earth still feels the weight of her bones that refuse to surrender. She just enjoys one day at a time. I don’t know what kind of thoughts she has; she only talks to herself. Understanding her is like trying to understand a smile. I don’t know what time it is to her; we only enjoy her existence to keep her presence in our memory; and I often don’t know what time it is either; we simply forget time when we are by her side.

The Monster…

Alzheimer’s has distorted the challenge of understanding the eternal farewell, hidden the awareness of a time that has expired, faded the reflection in a mirror that will soon break, and stopped the hourglass at the instant when all meaning in life fades. Sand grains frozen in free fall.

The Monster affects neuronal tissue, which adults have on average close to 100 billion of. Even 

a newborn has around 223 million. Neurons create, and recall memories, then protect them. However, when they begin to disappear, a person’s behavior changes. Some become similar to a three-year-old child. I’m not sure how many neurons my grandmother has today. 

She began to suffer in silence, without anyone noticing. As she tried to process why she couldn’t remember, her routine gradually became a puzzle where she constantly had to find the pieces to put her mind back together, until one day she gave up. The pieces didn’t fit together, they were lost and disappeared, leaving a half-finished, meaningless game that was eventually swept off the table and onto the floor. Today I wonder what her last thought was before Monster took charge.

***

When today leads to goodbye…

Today she is 92 years old, and this all started when she was about 60. She used to tell me I was her favorite person—she’d told me that since I was a child—and now that I’m an adult, those words live on in my memory. Today she smiles with a lost gaze, trying to identify the person in front of her, but she can’t. 

I struggle to understand her struggles, and to calm her anger. 

She goes where her steps want to go, because memory doesn’t reach any corner or space.

Memory is a treasure we should all cherish. It’s a magic box where time should be itself and nothing changes. A lockbox where we can keep control and no one can steal any of it. A transparent box where we are the eternal instant that allows us to be alive and no one suspects it. And where experience is captured and refuge teaches us — a permanent storage box where we keep the life in a body and a body in time. 

Yet, I don’t know how many secrets we keep, how many stories no one knows, and even… how much time we have to preserve our lives before an outsider tries to invite us on a journey into oblivion. 

I haven’t said goodbye to her yet. Maybe I’m not ready, because when I am, she suddenly remembers my name, suddenly my time and hers stop for a microsecond, and suddenly the call of hope makes sense… but nothing happens. They are just shooting stars that cross our path to remind us that everything built in life also dies in life, and with it, a hundred stars I’ve seen.

I’d never questioned it, but Alzheimer’s is the answer to understanding that memory has its time, it has a limit, it has an expiration date, it has an end, and it has its own cycle, but all within our own reality.

That game of “What superpowers would you like to have if you could have anything?” is not, for many, an imaginary world, but a reality in which the life of Alzheimer’s itself is silenced behind those who live it. 

Faced with the refusal to accept that death also lives within us once, time is no longer the obstacle many fear.