LogFAQs > #939642521

I want to make a few corrections to my previous post. My paternal grandfather, his wife and my paternal grandmother died on February 2019, February 2018 and summer 2019 respectively, all one year after what I said. My maternal grandmother also lives in a condominium, not an apartment block.

HornedLion posted...

Im now down to one grandparent. My grandfather who owns a farm. Hes almost 90 and I think his health is due to high activity doing farm chores and natural country cooking.

You're right, staying active can do wonders to your health. If it wasn't for that damn Alzheimer's disease, my paternal grandmother would still be alive and kicking today. She owned a huge house with her two sisters in a rural town. She lived upstairs while the other two lived downstairs, although one of the sections downstairs also included a second story. One of the sisters only used her section of the house (the one downstairs with more verticality) as a secondary home, so she let my father and his two kids use it whenever we spent a week there during the summer. We went there twice a year, once during the summer for at least a week and once during winter's holidays for slightly less than a week. Since the lodge was occupied (most of the family was there to celebrate the new year), we had to share our grandmother's section, but thankfully there were enough beds for everyone. I actually loved that place, it was huge. The backyard was immense and it included a lake and forest! She would wake up early every morning to swim to a small island in the middle of the lake and back, except during winter of course.

I lost my great aunt, the sister permanently living downstairs in her section of the house, to Alzheimer's disease a long time ago. Her deterioration and death was harder on my younger sister than me because she spent a lot of time with her while I was busy exploring or playing video games. She eventually had to be placed in a nursery home and died three years later. We got to use her section of the house instead of the other one ever since she left for the nursery home, whether it was in the summer or winter. I don't remember the exact year but I do remember playing Star Fox Adventure on the GameCube there after recently getting it for Christmas, so she was no longer living there in December 2002.

My grandmother showed signs of the disease when I was 13 or 14. She eventually had to sell the house and live in a small apartment. She thought her landlady was illegally entering her home and stealing her stuff, she gave me a remote controlled toy truck as a Christmas gift and she let herself be scammed by selling her car five times under its market price. At this point we had to place her in a nursery home. She managed to one-up the toy truck by giving me a bunch of multicolored socks sized for small children for my birthday and the card that came with it was just a card some company sent to her to thank her for being a loyal customer, she had simply written my name inside it. I donated both the truck and socks to charity. My father also became her legal tutor and kept me up to date when I stopped seeing her.

In the few years preceding her death, she was in a near vegetative state, incapable of eating herself and using the toilet. It's absurd that people had to change her diapers and everything. That woman was such a hard worker. I'm pretty sure that if it wasn't for this disease, she would still be swimming to that island to this day. Heck, she would still be doing it way past the age of 100. She managed to survive more than 15 years with the disease. Her slow deterioration broke records in slowness. This is because she was very healthy thanks to her active lifestyle. But her genes were damaged. Her entire family died of Alzheimer's disease. Her other sister showed signs of the disease one day and died a year later, her deterioration was fast. At least one of her children also died from it. The three sisters had already lost their parents and most of their grandparents to that same disease.

Thankfully, I doubt I'll get it. There's absolutely no history of the disease on the grandfather's side of the family. His parents and grandparents didn't have it, same goes for his uncles, aunts and cousins. As for his descendants, none of them have shown signs of the disease despite three of them being elderly. My father is the youngest of three siblings and he'll turn 68 next month. That man also has 21 descendants, I counted them at his funeral. One of them had previously died as a baby due to choking on food (his funeral was really sad), so I didn't count him, but I did count one who was still in his/her mother's womb. He left quite a legacy and he was proud of it. My branch is the only one who hasn't made great-grandchildren to him yet, but we're also the youngest one considering my paternal cousins are 5-15 years older than me. His oldest great-grandchild is now 20 and she's popular with the boys, so she might do like her parents did in their mid 20s and start a family in a few years.

My mother's side of the family is also completely free of Alzheimer's disease. The only thing I had to be careful about was cystic fibrosis. I lost an uncle in 1995 to it, which was my first experience with a relative's death. I also didn't get to know an aunt who died a year before my birth. Out of the three remaining siblings, two carry the gene (50% chance) and one doesn't (25% chance). My mother carries it, so she made sure my father didn't have it before having children with him. I tested for it when I was 17-18 and the result was negative (50% chance), so it's impossible for my children to have the disease. My sister hasn't tested yet.

Such is the cycle of life and death. People are born, then they die. Life is short, so don't take it for granted and cherish the time you have. I also know from experience that reminiscing about your deceased loved ones can bring back good memories and feel like they're still present. This is however easier after some time has passed. You have to give yourself the time to mourn them first. The longest I spent mourning someone was my maternal grandfather. It took me a year before I could finally smile and laugh thinking about him.

The saddest part about losing someone in the current state of the world is that you can't hold funerals anymore, at least not like before.

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I'm French speaking.
30/Male/Quebec