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Memories
Memories are like fish.
When you are bursting with the vitality of youth
You have a sturdy dam stretching across the river
A faithful sentry
That sits unmoving
Trapping all the writhing silver fish
Even as frothing white water slaps against its walls.
But if you have Alzheimer’s disease
Like my grandmother
That dam splinters and is swept into the raging currents
And all you can do is sit on the muddy banks
With a fraying net
And watch as all the fish stream through the gaping holes
Of your memory’s pitiful trap
Their little silver scales shining in defiance.
You see,
While I try to forget
The sight of my grandmother
Sprawled on the couch
Her lips babbling nonsense
Like an eccentric merry-go-round whirling in circles with a sputtering engine.
While I furiously try to sweep away
Exterminate
Obliterate
These memories that cloud my brain like smog,
I know that Grandma
Is crawling
In the dark, dark prison of her mind
And she is beseeching God
If religion has not been bleached by her illness
For memories
So many slivers of light that have vanished
As Alzheimer’s closes all the doors to her past
As she is locked away from
And forgets
Her childhood
Her husband
Her grandson’s name.
So do not throw a tantrum like an infant
When you break up with your girlfriend,
Do not wallow in the sweat of defeat after a championship game,
Do not feel the ghastly, sinister claws of exams ripping your grades
Do not try to wrap these scars
In the bandages of time
Even if the pain burns
Like the fires in the Devil’s realm
No,
Embrace your past
Embrace the many yawning chasms and snowy mountain peaks
That you slowly navigate on the road
Of Life
Embrace all the blissful joys and pains
Of memories because
You do not know the terror
Of forgetting.
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Alzheimer's has made my grandmother a shadow of her old self. It feels as if she already gone, and sometimes the sadness simply becomes unbearable for me. Poetry has become my only way of expressing the pain. All I can do is write, and cherish the memories we had together.