for me!  Again!

My life just like yours is full of beginnings….and some fabulous crescendos of endings! We literally dropped the anchor almost a year ago, and stepped back on Southern African soil. I left behind a life full of never ending days filled with Sun, and came back to George with its filtered days, some with Sun, some with the sky filled up with soft clouds, some with the wind rocking the trees around. And I wondered….

What will I fill my days with?

It came to us, sitting under the huge tree, with the peacocks snooping around us, on a normal day filled with Sun. This house, this big white house will be filled with people, people living with Alheimer’s!  I knew very little then, only that I “think” we lost our grandmother years ago to this disease, but it just felt so right giving this house to people living with it. We didn’t even thought about it much, and started doing homework and research on how to open a Home.

My grandmother, Moekie, lived with my mother. Soon we realised that she was different. My mom battled the most, trying to understand this stubborn, nasty rude old women! She shoved the slab of chocolates back to me when I brought her something for her sweet tooth, only to accept it from my mother minutes later. She refused to eat a plate of delicious food at the Sunday lunch table, only to eat a simple sandwich later. She forgot to put on her neatly laid out clothes, in the right order, and came out with her petticoat over her dress, and she fussed about every button on her cardigan!

At the doctor, he told us, that she is just old, and send us away to buy her a shake to drink every morning. But as you know, it didn’t get any better!

Eventually we placed her in a home, but she didn’t like sharing a room with someone, and it ended in another disaster. We found someone to look after her again, but we could see her slowly fade away. She sat in her room staring into nothing. She came to visit, just being here, sometimes looking up straight into my eyes, and I wondered if she knew who I was. And then she became so thin…  And when she was only a breath left in her once colourful dress, she softly passed over….

But I kept wondering about her….

And I kept wondering about this disease I still thought she had….Alzheimer’s.

 

And now we are opening a Home for people like my Moekie…