Support the Gift of Memory — Alzheimer’s Association Memory Walk
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Alzheimer’s has an impact on so many families. My grandmother started showing sign about 10 years ago and two years ago she began living in a nursing home that has a special wing for Alzheimer’s patients.
She never was able to process the birth of my daughter in 2003, though. I tell her about Gigi each time we talk and she listens with interest. We have pictures up in her room, too. But, each time I tell her it is as though she is hearing it for the first time. We don’t live close, so Gigi has only met my Grandma four times. The last was this past Christmas Day. We spent it with her in the nursing home. I took a picture of Grandma holding Gigi. They both enjoyed spending time together, but Grandma never understood that Gigi was anyone but a cute kid I had brought to visit. Nonethles, for Gigi this is how she knows her great grandmother.
My mother talks to her on the phone about once a week, but still feels as though she has already lost her Mom. There are no more late-night chats where Grandma gives my mom advice. She doesn’t remember one call to the next. She listens, though, and that is a great comfort.
It is so difficult for us to see her robbed of her precious memories and unable to be the woman she was meant to be. She was a woman who lived alone, independently, and with so much joy.
Join the Fight
The fight against Alzheimer’s is something all of us can join. The Alzheimer’s Association Memory Walk is the nation’s largest event to raise awareness and funds for Alzheimer care, support and research. It is held each year in hundreds of communities and has raised more than $225 million since 1989.
Anyone can form a team and Team Captains are still needed! If you want to be a Memory Walk Team Captain, you can sign up early to ensure you have plenty of time to recruit your team members and raise funds for fight against Alzheimer’s.
Every 72 seconds someone gets Alzheimer’s and right now there are 5 million Americans living with this disease. The odds are someone you know and love is living with it right now or will in the future. Get up and walk. Join the fight.
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