What I hate most about Alzheimers

I'm Anne. My mother is still alive-- but my mother is Andrea, not Roseanne.
Mom and Dad are in Boston until Friday. Chuck and Andrea are my Mom and Dad.
I live in New York now.... Brooklyn. Yes, it still counts as New York.
Pop-pop's not outside; he passed away three months ago.
We are in Maryland right now, not Cape Cod.
My mother is Andrea. Her mother is you.
I'm your granddaughter, not your niece.
Lucy and Dakota are fine, I just fed them. No, you can't share your chili with them.
Mom and Dad-- Chuck and Andrea-- are "the owners of this house" that you keep asking about.
No, I'm not your niece. No, not your daughter either. No, I'm not trying to trick you.

I've gotten pretty good at answering questions repeatedly and at going over the family tree-- repeatedly. I'll admit it can get annoying sometimes. By the sixth time in ten minutes of explaining who I am and who my mother is, I start to wonder if there's any point to trying to answer the questions. She doesn't remember our conversations two minutes later. I know that by Sunday she'll have forgotten I was ever here.

She keeps asking me about my life-- she's especially concerned about my social (aka "love") life. She wants to know how I like New York and if I have friends there. And I want to tell her everything-- about what's been good and what's been hard. I want her advice, and I want her to tell me it's all going to be okay. But by the time I'm halfway through my answer to her question, she's forgotten what she asked me. And even if she does start to respond to what I've said, a couple words into it she's forgotten the advice she was going to give me-- and what we were talking about in the first place.

I expected this week to be hard. I knew my patience would be stretched and tested to its max. I knew I'd get tired of repeating myself. I knew she'd get upset with me when I took her hearing aids out at night. But I just didn't prepare myself for how hard it would be not being able to get through to Gramarie-- the Gramarie of years ago.

So I guess what I hate most about Alzheimers is that it's stolen my grandmother away from me ahead of schedule. She's still living, but she's not here. And I really miss her.