Artgirl

7// drops of jupiter

CHAPTER 7: DROPS OF JUPITER

"I wish you'd hold me when I turn my back. The less I give, the more I get back. Oh, your hands can heal, your hands can bruise. I don't have a choice, but I'd still choose you." -The Civil Wars

Zoey Willow Hunter

ALZHEIMER'S disease was, without a doubt, one of the biggest assholes in the world.

It is an irreversible, progressive brain disorder that has as goal to destroy and feed onto a human's, commonly codgers, memory and thoughts. It causes severe trouble in thinking, remembering, reasoning and all of the adoptive mannerisms and behavior we learn to apply to our everyday lives unthinkably.

Alzheimer's is a seven staged monster, going from dormant to awake and mercilessly ruining a person's life, including anyone who loves that person's lives. At first, a man would forget his keys. Then, forget what he does as a job. Eventually, he looks at his wife, one he has loved without end for almost thirty years, and ask her who she is. A woman with five kids could be speaking on the phone with her son, with the firm belief that she is not married or with children.

That was why when Harold Walters got diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease a year ago, a dread dropped and exploded into his family and friend's stomachs with the same impact that an unfiltered bomb would.

That was why when my mother told me, I cried without stop for four hours. I refused to get out of my room. To me, he was dead. He was my grandfather, the only father figure I'd ever had. He taught me how to stand tall in the face of anything, how to laugh at the world when all it wanted was to soak itself in your blood, heck-he and I even had uncomfortable conversations about boys.

That was why when his face appeared on my laptop screen, I sucked in a breath. Not of relief that he was still there, but of fear, that this time, he wouldn't recognize me. Mom and his wife, Bea, sat by his side. Bea gave me a wide smile and waved.

"Hi, darling. How've you been?" she asked, and I couldn't help but notice the bags under her eyes. The wrinkles of laughter that she and her husband once shared were fading away.

I assumed mom helped her set up Skype on TV, because I could see most of their living room from here.

"I've been great! How've you been?" I smiled.

Other than the fact that my relationship with James was practically doomed, and that I wanted more than anything to be having that conversation in their home, and take in the smell of freshly baked cookies, that imprinted on their walls since I was a kid.

"Good. It's already snowing," chuckled Bea. "It melts when it touches the ground, though."

Walters didn't look up, eyes staying on his hands.

My mother and I shared a look, she nodded. I had spoken to her this morning, when she'd happily chattered about wedding plans. Due on New Year's eve, the day she got a second chance at growing old with someone approached with big steps. She sat far away from Walters.

"Walters?" I spoke out.

He blinked his eyes boring through the screen. He lost too much weight, the beer belly he once proudly wore shrunk into him. His eyes seemed too big, too unrecognized. He didn't hold his wife's hand back. (She was afraid that if she sent him to a nursing home, he'd fall in love all over again with a woman from there. She spent all of her time taking care of him. Her only child, Martin, sent her money from Australia.)

Bea noticed the panic in my eyes and put a hand on his arm, "Harry?"

He always remembered me. When, a month ago, he forgot Bea and my mom, he remembered me. He would look at me and smile, say my name and talk to me as if nothing had changed. He'd turn to Bea, point at me and say: "that's my daughter. That's my baby girl. Have you met her yet?"