I had a fabulous time. Check out the photos and video below, and then sneak a peek at what I said today at the Board of Directors meeting for the California Southland chapter of the Alzheimer's Association. What an honor to be asked to speak.
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| Go #22 (a.k.a. me) and Team Blonde! |
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| Some of the lovely ladies of Team Blonde! |
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| Adore this girl--one of the first people I met at Pepperdine, one of people I intend on knowing when we're old (and maybe gray?). |
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| November co-captains for the Junior Committee's Walk to End Alzheimer's team! |
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| Team Blonde. Aren't we pretty in our headbands? They are amazing and don't slip at all...check em out at BIC Bands! |
On Thursday of last week, Team Blonde’s football
practice ended with my face-planting straight into the ground. The dirt on my
face that night certainly indicated I’m not meant to be a football player, but
as I put the top down on my car and drove home, I felt so unbelievably
energized nonetheless. I sang obnoxiously loud to the music I was playing and
as I do on many nights felt very grateful to be alive.
When I pulled into my garage though, all of a
sudden I felt as though I had been sucker-punched in the stomach, because I
realized what had happened that night. I became my mother’s daughter. I didn’t
care how ridiculous I looked, because I loved what I was doing. I was having
fun, and I was surrounded by amazing people. If there is anything I remember
about my mom, it’s that she knew that life was best spent with the people you
love, having fun, regardless of how you look or what others think.
I wish I could have called her that night to tell
her, “Mom, I think I get it. I think I know how to do this whole thing called
truly enjoying life,” but in October, after 10 years battling Alzheimer’s, my
mom passed away, and so I instead found myself sitting down to write just how I
found myself at this point. 25 years old and without a mom to call to
celebrate…and then, without a mom to call for comfort.
When I was 15, my mom was diagnosed with
early-onset Alzheimer’s at the age of 50. The once bold and fiercely
independent woman I knew quickly became a stranger to me. My mom has always
been known as a force to be reckoned with, and so it was very odd to watch her
go through the initial stages of Alzheimer’s. At first it was the little
things: she would forget to pick me up from school, or she would go to pick me
up from school instead of work, and we once got lost on a drive home from the
airport.
Then, when I was 16, one day my mom asked,
“What’s your name again?” I don’t even remember what I said in response. Even
as I was writing what I would say today, there is much I feel I have forgotten, because Alzheimer’s
just didn’t make sense to me at the time. I could process other diseases, but
Alzheimer’s wreaked havoc on my family as we tried to figure out how to handle
the loss of my mom in so many ways.
I still remember the afternoon of my high school
graduation. At this point, my mom had been battling Alzheimer’s for about 3
years. Just a few weeks before, my family and I had flown to North Carolina to
see my brother graduate from college, and after my mom had made it through
traveling and attending his graduation, it didn’t occur to us that much might
change in a few weeks.
However, a few weeks of early-onset Alzheimer’s
had a huge impact. The day of my graduation, my mom refused to get ready to go
with us, insisting that the clothing my dad had laid out for her was for
children and that he was trying to trick her. Just five minutes before my
brother and I were about to leave to go by ourselves, my mom changed her mind
and decided to join us. Fortunately, graduation was fairly uneventful, and on
our way home, we decided to stop to get some dessert to celebrate that night.
As we made our way to the table to sit down, my mom stopped and started yelling
towards our table while looking at my dad: “I’m not going with him! He hits me!
I am not going with him!”
A moment of uncomfortable silence followed as we
decided what to do—I was ready to leave, but my aunt, my mom’s sister, kept
insisting: “No, Alex, you deserve to be able to celebrate! We can have dessert!
It’s okay!”
With Alzheimer’s and any life-threatening
disease, there is this inclination to hold onto what is “normal.” When I was
19, I was diagnosed with cancer, and I remember trying to maintain normalcy as
much as possible—so chemo would just be a blip in my life, not the definition
of my life at the time. In the very same way, that night at graduation and all
throughout my mom’s fight with Alzheimer’s, my family and I fought the battle
of how to maintain “normalcy.” The night of graduation, normalcy was having
dessert with my family, because if my mom could make it through dessert, then
maybe things would be okay. We could do what “normal” families do.
