Reflective Essay 2uc4y

Carraway 1 Nathalie Carraway Ms. Gardner English 10, Period 1 21 January 2013 Wandering Through a Labyrinth “Ball, flag, tree. Ball, flag, tree. Ball, flag, tree.” It seemed easy enough to keep track of three simple words. Yet, for her, it seemed a struggle to retrieve the words from her short-term memory. My grandma, sat at the dining room table, focusing, trying to the words so she could recite them at her check-up that afternoon. The smell of her traditional yellow cake with chocolate frosting taunted me on the counter, which she had made earlier, with a bit more assistance from Papa than he had given in the past. I sat with her, thinking that I, as an 8 year-old could so easily the three words, and I wondered why grandma could not seem to find the words in her memory. Tapping at the wooden table in frustration, Grandma Rose kept echoing the monosyllabic words. I later understood that my grandma was diagnosed with the early stages of Alzheimer’s Disease: Alzheimer's disease or Alzheimer's-type dementia is a progressive degeneration of brain tissue that primarily strikes people over age 65. It is the most common cause of dementia and is marked by a devastating mental decline. Intellectual functions such as memory, comprehension, and speech deteriorate. However, it was just explained to me as a disease that started to affect one’s memory. I began to picture the brain as a maze, with words, numbers and pictures floating around through the narrow corridors; one area was sectioned off as a special labyrinth for memories, from your

Carraway 2 past to the present. At her doctor’s appointment that day, those elementary words slipped her mind. Maybe she was just getting a little lost in her maze. One night, she did get lost. My papa found her wandering through the neighborhood one night after one of their neighbors, John, saw her walk outside. This was the first time she had ever even shown the threat of forgetting major things, such as where she lived. And I imagined her drifting farther from her memories within her brain, delving deeper into her personal labyrinth. Grandma started to go through many changes in her personality, in one moment she would randomly burst into tears, the next, she would declare some amazing sentiment that had been true for many years. One morning, my Papa entered his bathroom to find a note that Grandma had written and signed. “I promise to you that I will wake up every day at 6 am with a smile on my face and a song in my heart.” When telling us about the note, my papa referred to Grandma as “my sweetheart,” as he has since they first met. While she often showed the sweet, comionate side that I had always known of her, she began to frequently snap at her family and friends, calling them bad words out of nowhere. Often the only things that could calm her down appeared to be the soothing voices of Neil Diamond in “Sweet Caroline” and Elvis Presley in “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” Despite the inappropriateness of her words, we decided to laugh it off, thinking that she could have possibly been drawn to a new place in her brain which she had never visited before. As her disease progressed, my mother and my papa asked me to keep an eye on Grandma, to make sure she did not do anything dangerous while they had their backs turned. I could not imagine how this incredible influence on my life such as her, needed me to look out for her when I still struggled to care for myself. As her mental state slowly began to deteriorate, she lost the capability to complete simple tasks that she had been doing her entire life. She no longer

Carraway 3 could make the best apricot jam in the entire world, she would not come pick strawberries in the backyard with me, and she didn’t finish the gorgeous quilts she had been creating for years. I often take out the embroidered quilt that she had made for my mother years ago. Made up of dozens of patches, each patch holding a new pattern, each pattern held together by a multitude of strings. The strings flowed through the fabric, weaving in and out, life little threads of time, carrying small bits of memories. Each thread making up a specific memory, each patch a person, a place, a time; the patches linked together to create an entire lifespan of reminiscence. Why couldn’t the brain act like this, with each memory connected by some bond, each corridor producing a tie to the next thought? The fact of the matter is, the brain isn’t some maze; it is not a labyrinth that carries all your thoughts, memories, hopes, and dreams. The brain is just an organ of soft nervous tissue contained in the skull of vertebrates, functioning as the coordinating center of sensation and intellectual and nervous activity. But through it all, when I find a new experience, I feel as though I store it in a corner of my brain to later be found as a wander through the corridors of my labyrinth.

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Works Cited "Parts of the Brain." Human-memory.net. The Human Memory, n.d. Web. "Understanding Alzheimer's Disease-- The Basics." WebMD.com. Web MD, n.d. Web. "What Is Alzheimer's?" Alz.org. Alzheimer's Associaion, n.d. Web.