I wish I had a mind. At least then it would be there to keep me company.

My dear grandma Pat had Alzheimer’s. Her mother had it. I’m pretty sure my other grandparents have it too. It is a horrid, terrible disease that affects millions of people. It robs you of your independence. It deprives you of your most precious memories, loves and relationships. Your reality can turn into hallucinations and you can’t remember almost anything by the end.

Not where you are. Not how to eat. Not how to use the bathroom. Not even your own name…

There is no cure.

It is a slow, physically painless, but emotionally painful way to die, where you often live in fear and confusion. Where those around you who are family… suddenly become completely unknown to you.

They are strangers.

The sweet old lady we all loved became someone else, and it was everything we could do to hold on to those wonderful memories of who she used to be.

When my grandma died, it was after years of living with and taking care of her as the disease inevitably took over. At the time, I didn’t quite understand how to feel about it. Perhaps I still don’t. It just didn’t register… and I have my regrets. What would I have done differently? What should I have said…?

I find it hard not to weep when I think of the horrors this disease brings, and live with the fear of whether someone else I love may fall victim to it.

This is a short story of pain, regret, joy and memories in an ever changing, confusing world for someone with the same disease.

***

“I woke up this morning and I wish I had a mind. At least then it would be there to keep me company.”

I have that thing that makes you forget, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Day by day my brain is becoming like well mushed potatoes! But I don’t feel ill with it, I just get a bit muddled. I just forget things… even if I want them to remain.

I look at the time and realise I am but ticks of the clock’s tock, but half the time I can’t even remember I have something wrong with me. Life is an endless loop of repetition, spiraling in a downward direction.

I am awake, but feel like I am asleep.

But when I remember how to sleep, oh boy! True sleep rocks my world. It gives me more chances to dream, and dreams are what get me through the day, to let me in on the secrets of another world.

When I dream, I am awake for the first time!

What grand adventures, what epics and legends, loves and tragedies shall I experience? What life? A thousand lives indeed, and infinite possibilities. Which magnificent author do I have to thank for such things?

But waking…

No, waking is death itself. I will not bore you with the indignities, or the absolute belief that you are your young self until you see your reflection.

Yes, the problem with waking is that your memories of fantastical dreams fade quickly and reality brings oneself to near insanity… Sometimes you live days out waiting to die, if you can remember that you’re dying.

So I try to remember in notes, for what it’s worth, in a world where nothing lasts forever as I enjoy another sleep, hopeful for a dream, another step closer to the inevitable.

*Memories flicker before me like a magical kaleidoscope of illusory wings, indiscernible yet beautiful, then lost forever in the constant flutter, as if bidding a last farewell.*

I talk to myself when I’m alone… so I don’t feel so lonely. I wish I had a mind. Then it would be company for me.

I like to watch the flying beings poke their heads of glorious colours over the roof to stare back at me inside the house. They want their seeds. They’re always only ever after the damn seeds! I think I’ve made them all so fat. But I do love to watch them. Great salmon and cloudy grey ones, squawking white and vibrant yellows, gorgeous apple greens with cherry or blueberry faces, tiny orange and beige ones, or agile sea blue and blacks, flitting this way and that, their songs a never-ending delight.

The only one that never comes is the one that watches me at night. Waiting, never moving. Its eyes, empty voids of hollow black in the darkness, sunken in a round face of silvery white. Its wings are the colour of the trees it inhabits. The strangers in my house call it a “barn owl”, but no owl has ever made me forget how to breathe.

*Love makes you crazy, love makes you come out looking like a nutty dreamer, where all the things are brighter even if they have no taste. But now the world is blackened and the volume’s turned down.

I miss her wearing my jackets when she’s cold. I miss the smell she’d leave behind. I miss the way she’d say my name. I miss her laugh that jumps around. I miss her wry smile. I miss her eyes, their deepness, their depth, dark eyes that smile. I miss her, and I wish I never met her.*

Today is my birthday. I am now 20. Will I become a famous painter perhaps? An award-winning author? A Dad? Strange… there’s something wrong with all these mirrors, because all I see is an old man I’ve never met before. He mocks my movements. He stares straight back at me, sad like, sympathetic, wearing a bicolour cardigan that looks so familiar…

*I’m on the top of a mountain, overlooking a valley in the middle-o-nowhere where the air is crisp and cool. I come for a pilgrimage of the soul. It’s pitch black except for a sky now filled with bright distant lights, clear in the blackness next to a moon that pulses with white magic. The clouds are glowing behind the western hills and shooting stars scatter across the heavens. The diamonds of the universe forever cover above like millions of tiny glistening raindrops, falling as far as the eyes can see. The wonders of the universe above are beyond our minds’ comprehension and one cannot help but think: Who am I but a simple, insignificant being in such an endless existence?

Faint flashes appear in the north, barely noticeable, but outlining the majestic mountains in the distance; a storm to give the merciful kiss of life to our parched souls. Yet my eyes catch something behind the light and the air becomes as still as death. A familiar silhouette burns in the dark. I cannot breathe.*

I wake from a bad dream. The bitter aftertaste leaves a sick, sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. It makes me want to throw up. You spend your whole life running away from a certainty that you keep denying; the edges of a gaping black hole gnawing at your heels. But I can’t forget, and I wouldn’t believe it, and it wasn’t a dream…

Sometimes you just want to leave everything, and just go somewhere nobody knows you and start over. When your heart is void of anything, it’s… the worst feeling in the world. You slowly realize you’ve forgotten what all the trees smell like. You’re numb to everything, and everything appears dull and discoloured, out of tune, out of time, out of focus... There is no direction, no substance, purpose or sense of comings or goings, and sustaining life just becomes a means of living. You hate it, and you want to get out.

“The darkness was mad and made me fall down.”

When the people that should believe in you the most don’t, you can’t understand why. I call them liars and they ignore me. Fools, on a great stage of fools, are these strangers who call themselves “family”. They tell me my parents are dead when I saw them this morning. They tell me this is my home of 50 years I’ve never seen before.

I burned the lies written on old faded valentines ‘love you always’ - it’s all a foul lie. I cut up family photos as no-one will want them. I am locked in this room and I don’t understand why.

Keep on smiling, the sun’s still shining.Keep on smiling, the sun’s still shining.Keep on smiling, the sun’s still shining.Keep on smiling, the sun’s still shining.Keep on smiling, the sun’s still shining.

Life is bliss, until you don’t know what to believe in anymore… or who… I keep reliving the past, trying to wipe it out but it only leaves greasy smudges I want to clean, make it easier to forget, kissing the wounds to make ‘em better.

I have to believe I’ll heal, or else I will go mad. You can’t tell anyone about the torment inside. You’re an actor with no audience. You go home sometimes and don’t know who you are. You do what has become second nature to you. You lie.

Beings in my house forcibly turn up the volume, but one doesn’t like the yelling. You say stop-stop! But hear nothing but noise directed at you. They never listen and it hurts you inside because the people who should listen to you the most don’t bother. So you want to leave, you want to get out like a madman.

I want to sleep and wake up, and for it all to be over. Sometimes I feel like I wish I had a mind, at least it would be company.

*The dark one in my dreams looks so familiar… Tears streak its face till I realise with horror and regret who it is and I run, run as fast as I can. All I know is that if I don’t keep running, I’ll start screaming. I run till I collapse, shaking and clutching at my chest. My heart, my heart. I hear the father accusing me of murder. But I didn’t do anything. Did I? Did I? Maybe I did…*

The sun rises and I find myself changed. The light brings back pleasant memories. You hope for some dreams to be real, and some realities to be just bad dreams; illusions that will one day reveal themselves to the world as joyful things or happy mistakes. The warmth gently massages my limbs and tired bones, coursing through me as it refreshes the spirit, lifting heavy sorrows now weightless and my heart is open. The subtlest sway of the tree leaves as we glide past a sign that I’m not alone, and somebody’s there to make sure that I’m alright.