Chris Cerasi Remembers His Grandmother

I never really had to deal with death until I was in my thirties. This was perhaps a mixed blessing. While distant relatives and those I was not particularly close to passed away over the years, it wasn’t until my paternal grandmother’s death in the winter of 2006 that I finally had to deal with the subject I had gratefully, yet nervously, avoided for years.

I was very close to my grandmother, whom we affectionately called “Vee” (her real name was Victoria). She had been a constant, close (sometimes too close) presence throughout my life, and our relationship was always easy, affectionate, and very loving. While she sometimes could be a dictator in her approach to family gatherings, her heart was always in the right place, and I loved her dearly. I loved her passion, her smile, her warmth, and her ability to never tire of visiting friends and family as often as she could. She was a loud, nudgy social butterfly, flitting from home to home in her well-loved car; her iconic puff of sprayed-in-place white hair often the only visible thing above the steering wheel.

When she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s after an extended hospital stay in the early ‘00s, we were devastated. I was living on the West Coast at the time and saw her less frequently due to travel and other practicalities. When I did visit for holidays and vacations, I noticed how she seemed worse each time I saw her. She forgot things. She repeated her questions and never seemed to really grasp the answers, and worst of all, she stopped wanting to go places and preferred to stay in her house by herself. While the part of me that did not want to deal with the reality of her situation hoped that she would get better, the intellectual part knew that sooner or later she was going to leave us. I tried to focus on the positive as long as I could and just enjoy seeing her, but eventually it became evident that her time was limited.

I saw her for the last time two weeks before she died. She was so frail and fragile, only a dim shadow of her former vigorous self, and my heart broke. Her head was tilted to one side, her lips moved but what she said made no sense and was repetitive and worst of all, it seemed that the best of her, the grandmother I loved who was so present and didn’t forget a thing, had long gone. When she passed away quietly two weeks later, I realized that the Vee I really knew, the Vee that was really her true, best self, had died just before she had been stricken with Alzheimer’s. That was the grandmother I remember and honor now, and that is the Vee I will always cherish. When my father went through her belongings after she died, he gave me her high school ring, which I had always liked to look at and try on. It made me feel close to her, and because it was something she herself was proud of, it made me honored to become its new owner. I wear it on a chain around my neck so that it is close to my heart. So that Vee is close to my heart, where she belongs… - Christopher Cerasi, 6/24/2008

Like Chris, many of us have experienced the death of a loved one. Send your story to autwil@comcast.net if you wish to share a CAUSE OF DEATH that has touched your life and I’ll post it on my guest blog.

For more on the most recent connection between calcium and Alzheimer’s check this out:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91891831