The family gathered around grandpa, one of our monthly visits since we had put him in a home, it hadn’t been an easy decision but the old man just couldn’t look after himself anymore, he was already becoming frail with age you see, but now Alzheimer’s was taking what was left of him. He had been so strong before too, I guess he had to be with the life he’d lived, poor guy had lost two children (they would have been my aunt and uncle) in a house fire when he was only a young man. And if that wasn’t enough the grief drove his wife to suicide a short two years later. Fortunately Gramps was a fighter and went on to raise my mother alone, for which I am eternally grateful.
It had affected them deeply though, my poor mum, god bless her wasn’t quite as resilient as Gramps, a lifelong battle with alcohol and prescription drugs can attest to that, but she got on as best she could. They often seemed sad though, and worst of all the trauma had driven them apart, by now she couldn’t even bring herself to visit him and Gramps never asked, I guess they must remind each other of what they lost.
Now it was horrible to watch such a strong and determined man wither away under the burden of Alzheimer’s, but the disease, perhaps ironically, did bring with it some small mercy, because now for the first time in years there were days when he actually looked happy, when the pain of memory subsided and he even forgot who he was, I guess when you have so much pain stored up ignorance can be bliss.
The doctor’s worried though, a careless mind may sometimes be at ease but it’s only a short step from there to further decline, so they suggested some therapy’s to jog his memory and keep the man himself.
Well at first we weren’t sure, whenever he did remember himself he looked sad again, and was it worth it? To trouble an old man so close to the end with painful memory’s? We did like seeing him a little happier after all, even if it was only briefly, but as time went on it became clear he was mentally regressing, becoming more childlike by the day, he had even taken to keeping a nightlight on to “keep the boogeyman away”, so reluctantly we took the doctor’s advice.
At their behest we dug up all the family photo’s we could find and, armed with our own little album of history presented them to him, now he didn’t know who he was or who we were let alone the people in the pictures, but he took delight in looking through them anyway, there was me getting my diploma, my brother Jeff winning silver in the school race, the kids gathered around the tree at Christmas, happy memories. We carried on flicking through the album, he had a few moments of faint recognition, a relative or two he seemed to think he knew, but mostly gramps was just having fun looking, that is until we turned to a picture of his lost children and wife.
He looked the picture over intently and his childlike expression turned to one of deep sadness, we asked if he remembered who they were and he said no, only that “it was awful, those poor children..”, not wanting to see him like this I decided to turn the page. Gramps looked up at me kindly as if to say thank you, but as his eyes returned to the book I could see the colour drain from his face, trembling his breath drew short and in a panicked frenzy he began to cry out.
“That HIM! The bogeyman! Please! Keep him away! He.. he did terrible things to those kids, he’s a monster! A murderer! He.. he..”
Gramps threw the book down and huddled up into the fetal position, sobbing quietly like a child.
On the floor was an old photograph of a man, my grandpa in his youth.
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Credits to: xhaze
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