I am from my grandmother,

My identical twin across generations,

With matching golden spirals cascading from our heads,

Sky eyes, and icy hands and noses.

“Cold hands, warm heart,” my mom would echo from hers.

Who I mirror in personality,

With her organized mind and need for control.

I am from my grandmother’s papery skin,

Smooth as a skipping stone, though thin enough to feel her brittle bones.

I am from her arthritis hands that constrict like a cobra,

And refuse to let go,

Even though she doesn’t know why.

“You are my wagon,” the last words she spoke to me in a husky voice,

Back in August of 2022,

Before this cruel disease stole her speech,

Reducing it to unintelligible whispers,

and then nothing at all.

I am from her Alzheimer’s brain,

A disease that taints my family,

One that my mother has dutifully accepted as her own fate,

Acting as though she’s moved on,

“Just throw me in a home when I’m older and move on with your lives.”

The scarce memories I have of my grandma are with her progressively deteriorating memory,

Misspelling my name, her last name, on Christmas presents,

Or her slowly ceasing to show up to family dinner.

When my mom says, “I first noticed the signs when I was pregnant with you,”

I feel as though I am the bad omen,

The ember that sparked this curse upon my family,

Her reincarnation born too early.

And that maybe, if I hadn’t been born, none of this would be happening at all.

I am from broken hope and a letter,

Addressed to me by my grandmother, before she had her first of many surgeries, with the anxiety of someone with early-stage Alzheimer’s.

Written in case she didn’t survive, to be given to me when I was older, little did she know it would be the only lasting sign of a full conversation between us,

The rest blemished by childhood memory.

I am from a family that for decades danced around my grandmother’s diagnosis,

As if we could look back through the pink photo albums that line the shelves,

And ignore the light slowly slipping from her eyes.

Because my family does not talk about death or fears of the future.

We ignore them.

We bury our secrets deep and our denial even deeper,

We tell our children to hush up about the diagnosis they receive,

Marking us as a burden, as shame.

We use guilt to our favor,

My mom snapping,

“I put in all this work,

I fought for you,

Now SHUT UP, and stop telling me that it’s not working, that you need more,

Because I FOUGHT for you then.”

But shouldn’t you fight for me now?

Because parenting isn’t conditional, just little people to use and to pass your dark humor unto,

Because parenting isn’t a one-time favor, it’s a continual devotion to help ME,

Because I’m drowning, mom.

I’m drowning in silence,

Because I do what I am taught,

I bury my depression deep

And the knife I want to slit my throat with even deeper,

Because you told me that in this family, no one can ever know.

But now my grandmother has reached the last stage in her fight against Alzheimer’s.

I have seen her for the last time,

Back in August,

Since she most likely won’t make it to March.

I am suffocating in my grief,

For my grandmother who is still alive, yet forgets that I exist,

For the one member of my family that I have ever felt similar to,

The other black sheep.

However, I am facing the monster that is my grief alone,

The sole soldier against the army that threatens to snuff my flame out,

Because in my family, we don’t talk about it,

We don’t voice these fears about death,

These dark secrets and anxieties we push to the back of our brain and will ourselves to forget.

Because in this family, no one can ever know.

Isn’t that what you want mom?

Did I make you proud?