History

So the History-

This is Mattie C. Waterfield, the young, vibrant woman she once was, way before I ever had the pleasure of meeting her.

I'll start back to my first introduction to Alzheimer's. That was in 1977. I was very young. . but I have some fond memories of my Great Grandmother on my mothers side. One of the best, that I'll share with you all is that she always gave me vanilla wafers. I remember her living out back in a house my grandfather had built especially for her. My Grandfather and Grandmother took care of her for as long as they could, but eventually, she was too much to handle and she had to be admitted into a nursing home.

We went to visit her several times. I remember those visits because of two things; the first was the smell of the place. It smelled like urine. Now, it wasn't a bad place, it was just that the person who stayed in the bed next to my Great Grandmother had an issue, and as a child, those sorts of things catch your attention. The second memory was that my Grandmother didn't know who I was. This upset me, because it didn't make sense to me.

I have other memories of her, but I'm going to skip ahead a bit. My Great Grandmother died shortly after being admitted into that nursing home. As a child, my parents did not tell me when she died, but I remember being very upset when I found out later that she had passed away. I was upset that I didn't get to go to the funeral, and upset that I wasn't told. I was young, but I was very aware even then of how awful a disease this must have been- to die not knowing who you are. I remember my mother telling me that she died from Dementia. At that time, they called it that more than Alzheimer's, but I'm fairly certain thinking back that she did have what I'll refer to from here on out as AD. Her death was the first family death I experienced in my life, and one that really affected me more than I realized at the time.