Little Voices in My Head

I’ve spent the last two days off work, at home, taking care of Pammie. I’ve really enjoyed the time with her, yet my heart is breaking. Pammie is dying. God, even typing that sentence makes me weep. I suppose I shouldn’t focus on that. She has Alzheimer’s. It’s been called the silent killer. It’s a slow, malicious, thief that robs families of their loved ones a few simple things at a time. The cruelest part is that Pammie’s case is so much more complicated because of who she was born to be. She was already afflicted with enough pain in her life. She was born with Down’s Syndrome. That always made her unique, wholly her own blessed angel. Sweet, pure, yet…simple. She’s never had the ability to retain a lot of information. So now, the information being stolen from her seems doubly heinous. Watching her forget what happened yesterday, or that tomorrow will eventually come, shatters my heart. Having to remove the knobs from the stove so she can’t play with the burners, or put extra locks on the doors so she can’t wander off makes me want to sit down and bawl for what we’ve lost with her. This is a woman who, when I was a child, used to cook me hot dogs and macaroni and cheese, and take me to school each morning. Who dried my tears when I fell off my bicycle, taught me how to use a latch-hook to make a rug, always found that last elusive word in the find-a-word puzzle books. Now Pammie cries for reasons known only to her, can’t match the colours in a paint by number, and circles the same letters over and over in her puzzle books. It’s the little things you miss.