I have yet to truly experience the death of someone close to me. Because of this, I will be discussing how I’ve dealt with my grandfather’s slow decline in to
Alzheimer’s. The stages of grief apply to this situation just as much as if he had died, as I sometimes feel like my grandfather isn’t really with us anymore.
My grandfather was someone I was very close to. I lived only twenty minutes away from him and saw him and my grandmother at least once every two weeks, though oftentimes it was a lot more often. He was enamored with Walt Disney and
Disneyland and would oftentimes steal my cousin and I from our parents for a weekend and make the six-hour drive to Disneyland “just because”.
I was thirteen when my family became aware of my grandfather’s memory issues and ironically enough it was at Disneyland. It was a rather cold and wet weekend and my grandfather, a navy veteran, was taken back to his time in the war.
My parents dealt with this by herding my grandfather away. It wasn’t until we got home from Disneyland that my parents…show more content… The first one was the Christmas the next year. By this point my grandfather couldn’t remember my name. I was only fourteen and that was really hard. I cried through most of the formal dinner, all while being yelled at by my grandfather’s youngest son for “not acting like everything was normal”. The next major experience was probably just a few months later when my grandmother brought my grandfather over to my house for a visit. My parents weren’t home so when it was time for my grandparents to leave, I helped my grandmother get my grandfather in the car. A plane flew overhead and my grandfather looked at me and asked “where’s the bomb coming down?”. I panicked and my dad had to leave work early to come home and explain again what was happening to my
