I am not athletic

Nor strong

Nor healthy, in body or mind

And yet every day

I make a dogged effort

A desperate effort

to run away

I am constantly stumbling

Chest heaving,

Breath sobbing

As I stagger away from

My problems

But I have a roadblock.

A brick that always trips me up

And that is

the unsettling, tormenting secret

That I can

Slide down desert dunes, splash through salty spray,

Do everything in my power to get away

But I will never escape one problem:

Me.

Alzheimers is a curse

You can approach him over and over

And he will never remember your name

Or how he hid gold dollar coins for you to find

Or how he used to carry you on his shoulders.

He will never remember

The bear hugs he was so good at giving

The hat he always wore to the zoo

How much you love him.

I open a dusty box in the basement

Pick up an old cap

Run my fingers along its seams

As the memories roll like a blurry film reel

Of the person who used to wear this hat

And doesn’t remember it

Much less the days he wore it

Much less the people he spent those days with.

Every time nostalgia hits

With a dollar coin, a splash park, a tired cap

I’m hit in the stomach with the bittersweet sensation

That I’m saying goodbye,

Over and over,

And it doesn’t hurt any less

The thousandth time I’ve been gutted with this sadness

Than the first time I heard

He would slowly lose his mind.

But

The one blessing

Of the Alzheimers curse

Is that you get to say goodbye

More than once.

More than twice.

More times than you can count

Because although you remember all the farewells

He doesn’t

And so every goodbye is new to him.

You get to say goodbye a hundred thousand times

And still never truly have to say it.

For although his memory is drowned in the lake of wrong chemicals and unknown genetics that absorbed his mind

You are still walking in the sea of beautiful memories

That he left you.

And though you say goodbye to him every day,

Not knowing if today will be the last time you see him alive,

You will never say goodbye to his memory.

You will never bid farewell to how much you love him.

You will never have to.

You can pick up a dollar coin

Brush the cap with your fingertips

Carry his essence along with your sister on your shoulders in memoriam

And smile.