A/N: Another essay I wrote for my creative non-fiction – a biographical sketch about my grandma who is struggling with Alzheimer’s disease. Please read and review!! Thanks!

Pumpkin Pie for Breakfast

Grammy was always the first one awake. I was a light sleeper then, and I could always hear her in the kitchen very early in the morning, banging pots and pans around and starting the coffee. I would lie in bed for a few minutes with the covers up to my chin, listening to my sister breathing, asleep beside me, and enjoying the summer breeze through the window. Then I would quietly get out of bed and sneak down to the kitchen to join her.

“Good morning, Grammy,” I would say, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. She would look over at me from the sink and smile. As I took my seat at the kitchen table, she would pull the left-overs of last night’s pumpkin pie out of the fridge and cut me a piece for breakfast.

“Our favorite,” she would say with a smile, setting the plate in front of me. I was only allowed to have pie for breakfast when Mom was still asleep. I was spoiled.

Every summer when I was young, my mom would pack my sisters and me into the car and drive three hours north to St. Mary’s, Pennsylvania to visit my grandparents for one of our week-long visits. In the mornings we would walk to the community pool for swimming lessons and then spend the afternoons lounging in the sun with ice cream from the snack bar. Sometimes Grammy would join us after she’d finished the laundry or the grocery shopping or whatever else was on her “to-do” list. She always wore jeans, even if it was 80 degrees, and sat in a lounge chair at the side of the pool watching patiently as we cannon-balled into the water, performed countless handstands and somersaults, and shrieked and giggled as we slid down the water slide a hundred times.

When we were tired of swimming, Grammy and Mom would help us gather up all the towels and goggles and pool passes and take us home. After dinner, sometimes we would go out for ice cream or sometimes Grampy would take us to the Knights of Columbus club to play pool and eat popcorn. But usually, we would sit out on the back patio porch swing listening to the crickets with sweating cans of Pepsi and hair damp from the shower. Grammy often told me my favorite story about when I was a baby.

“Grampy would get you into the stroller and you were so excited because you knew what was coming. And he would push you around in circles, faster and faster and you would laugh and laugh and make these ‘whoop whoop’ noises,” she would say, imitating the whooping noises the same way she always did, which always made me laugh. Then she would tell me about her relationship with her sister when they were young, how they fought all the time, and about how much she loved Elvis, The King of Rock and Roll.

Before bed every night, I would stand in the downstairs bathroom and watch as Grammy set her short salt-and-pepper hair in rollers, spritzed it with hairspray, and covered her head with a red scarf.

“Will you do my hair, Grammy?” I would often ask.

“You’re hair’s already curly, sweetie,” she would say gently, “You got lucky so you don’t need curlers. I always wished I had hair like yours.”

When the week was over, my mom would pack up all our belongings, and Grampy would help her load them into the car. I would sit in the family room pouting because I didn’t want to leave.

“Now, remember, Lizzie,” Grammy always gave me the same lecture before I climbed into the van, “no boyfriends. Keep reading. You still want to become a librarian right? That’s what I always wanted to do, but I didn’t have the chance to go to college. But you will, sweetie, you’ll go to college and do great things with your life. But always come back and visit me, even when you’re grown up, don’t forget about your Grammy.”

“I could never forget about you, Grammy. I love you.” But as I grew up, visits were fewer and further between. School and extra-curricular activities got in the way. My mom started working full time and couldn’t take as much time off work to go visit relatives. When I turned 16, I started a job and didn’t want to take off very many weekends, let alone an entire week. My friends became more important than family, and I didn’t want to miss out on a week of summer fun to visit my grandparents in a small town where I didn’t know anyone. We visited maybe twice a year instead of almost once a month.

Because we visited less and less often, I think it took us longer than it should have to realize that she was changing. She had always been very sharp and smart, always reading books and newspapers and doing chores around the house. Then, when I was in high school, I noticed that she had a list of family member’s birthdays and how old they were posted next to the calendar, which was still turned to the previous month. She would wear the same pink knit sweater three days in a row, not remembering that it was what she’d worn the day before. She forgot to get housework done, spending most of the day sitting in her chair in the family room looking at the TV, but not really watching it. Sometimes she even forgot to eat until Grampy would hand her a sandwich.

Her face would light up when we visited though; I think it helped her to have company around. I would sit on the couch next to her, reading a book or perusing one of the many Elvis magazines she always had stacked on the end table, and she would tell me the same story three or four times in one hour. She would become frustrated when the look on my face revealed that I’d already heard that story and she didn’t remember telling me. That’s when my mom decided that she should probably see a doctor.

When I was nineteen and took my boyfriend for a visit to meet her she was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. “You’re too young for boys, dear,” she said, repeating what she’d told me my entire life. “He’s a very nice boy, though.” An hour later, she forgot who he was. She asked over and over, “What’s your name, honey?” or “And who is this young man?”

At a fiftieth anniversary party for her and my grandpa, her attention was always elsewhere. My mom appointed me photographer, but it was impossible to get a picture of her and Grampy with her smiling at the camera. The Elvis impersonator got her attention though. We hadn’t seen her that happy in years. She thought he was really Elvis while he was whirling her around the dance floor, and when he told her she was beautiful, she just about swooned.

That same year, Grammy began waking up in the middle of the night and walking around the house, thinking that it was morning. One night she slipped in the dark, and Grampy couldn’t get her to stand up again. She wasn’t hurt, but Grampy decided that a nursing home with 24 hour supervision would be a safer environment for her.

The first time I visited Grammy in the nursing home was this past Christmas, about six months after she had moved in. It was sad to see her there with a vague look in her eyes when she saw me, not knowing who I was or recognizing my parents or my sisters. The woman in the nursing home is different. She is friendly, but she treats us like strangers. Her hair is cropped close to her head, no longer long enough to set in curlers, and her slacks and sweater are all wrinkled. She has good days and bad days; sometimes she persistently asks to go home, other days she barely talks at all, but she is never lonely. Even though she is different, she is still Grammy. Grampy visits her about three times a day and she still recognizes him as her husband. She’s friendly with the other residents and the nurses. She has a quaint room with family member’s pictures decorating the walls and a familiar bedspread to make it seem more like home. The nurses play VHS tapes of Elvis performing her favorite songs to make her smile. And pumpkin pie is still her favorite, as well as mine, though I doubt the nurses let her eat it for breakfast.