It started with forgetfulness. Difficulty conjuring up a name, or struggling to remember where she had put her car keys or her glasses. Forgetting that she had already put the meat for dinner in the refrigerator to thaw and only noticing it two days later when my grandpa asked about it. In my late 20s and early 30s, it seemed natural. Who didn't get off track every now and then? And my grandma, at the time in her early 80s, simply shrugged it off with a laugh and a self-depreciating remark about how she'd lose her head if it wasn't attached - or something to that effect.

I was the one who noticed it was more than misplacing her car keys. Listening to her say how she had spent the last three days cleaning their apartment, only to notice heavy layers of dust on the furniture and the floor unvacuumed. Finding a cup of cold coffee in the toaster oven instead of the microwave. Hearing my grandpa say how it had taken her two hours to get to and from the store for a quick few items and suspecting she had wandered through the store aisles forgetting what she had come for, or worse, lost her direction driving home.

"We need to pay attention to this," I told my mom and her sister. They were concerned, but after talking with Grandma about it, were reassured by Grandma's protestations that they were "making too much of things" and that she was "just fine."

Little by little, we lost Grandma as she journeyed down her path into the woods of dementia. It wasn't obvious all the time, and she was still the loving, blissfully funny woman we had always known in between the bouts of forgetfulness. Then, an unplanned series of surgeries drew her deep into the forest for good. I have read that anesthesia can worsen dementia - whether or not that was the case with my grandma, the woman I had known had left - and she wasn't coming back.

Grandma now lives in the county nursing home her mother died in. My grandpa was a daily visitor until he passed away a few years ago, but she hasn't noticed, and she doesn't ask about him. She refuses to wear her dentures - which is hard for me to see, because she was always so self-conscious about them and meticulous about her appearance. She is prone to acting out and shouting at people trying to help her - behaviors she would be mortified about if she had any idea what was happening.

But there are moments a door opens when we visit her. Her face opens in recognition as she greets us with words that don't make sense, but she's clearly happy to see us. This weekend was one of those moments. I brought her a hot fudge sundae from McDonalds - one of her favorite treats - and a stack of brightly colored magazines with lots of pictures. She savored her ice cream, saying "Oh, is that good." She
paged through the magazines, commenting on the pretty colors, the cute dogs, the "darling" children. We sat, we smiled and laughed, we looked at pictures, and we were together.

When it was time to go, I told her to keep reading her magazines and that I would be back soon. "Thank you, Honey," she said. "Thank you."

What she was thanking me for, I'm not sure. But I like to think that is was for being present. For spending a pleasant hour with the simple pleasures of ice cream and magazines, smiling and laughter.

As the elevator doors were closing, I looked to the corner where she still sat, licking her thumb as she paged through her magazine. "Thank you, Grandma," I said. "Thank you."