March• 2018 | 121READER’S DIGEST
words became irretrievable, sen-
tences refused to come out. Belong-
ings vanished: keys, glasses, earrings.
She lost things and then forgot what
she had lost.
A fraying at the edges of her life.
“I know the tide is going out on my
memory,” she would say.
She had trouble with time. “I have
no clock in my head anymore,” is how
she put it. “The concept of how long it
takes to do something has been lost.”
If she had seen someone that morn-
ing, by afternoon she would wonder if
it had happened some other day.
Her new best friend was her iPhone.
She fished it out maybe 20 times a day
and scrolled through the calendar and
the notes she made to herself. Have
to be where? When? Do what? Call
whom? She used the camera to snap
pictures of places to remember them.
In March 2014 she went to the
CaringKind organisation in midtown
Manhattan. She had been reluctant
to visit, picturing the place as a re-
source for those sunk deeper into the
disease’s darkening world, that it was
too early for her. But once she min-
gled, she knew she was right on time.
“I thought these were my people,” she
said. “This is where I belong.”
She enrolled in some programmes,
including a photography workshop.
She signed on for a Memory Works
group that engaged in mind exer-
cises. The moderator said the games
would not cure them or forestall their
decline. They were there to have fun –
name words starting with the letter B;
foods starting with the letter M.
The best part was not having to
mask her shortcomings. In the out-
side world it was a constant strug-
gle to keep up. Outside, people with
Alzheimer’s are looked on as broken.Inside these walls, though, everyone
had it. Alzheimer’s was normal. In
Memory Works, she felt protected
and safe.
The chumminess among these
strangers was amazing. They were hi-
jacked by a ghastly disease. But they
joked around, egged one another on.
“Everyone’s laughing,” she reported,
“and everyone is happy they are with
people just like them who can’t get the
words out.” Sitting there in the bub-
bly ambience, she would sometimes
think, “We shouldn’t be this happy.”HER NEW BEST FRIEND WAS HER IPHONE.
MAYBE20TIMESADAYSHESCROLLED
THROUGH THE CALENDAR