My husband and I spent a lot of quality time with our grandchildren. I remember the day he hugged one of them saying; ‘Being with you is like opening a can of springtime,’ and his eyes lit up as he smiled. Does this sound like someone with Alzheimer’s?
He always looked on the bright side of life and found something positive in each situation every single day; a sunset, a flowering shrub, a beautiful view. He smiled at people and seldom complained even though the process of losing his memory must have been frightening.
Of course there were times when he reached the stage when he could no longer remember yesterday and was unable to plan for tomorrow, but that didn’t mean that he had lost his ability to enjoy the here and now. He could and he did. We lived from minute to minute. We bought last minute tickets to plays and the odd concert instead of the subscription tickets we used to have. We took in the occasional movie too although he seldom grasped the plot. I had a lot of trouble coping with the fact that his once sharp memory was failing him.
