One of my biggest fears

This is from Writer's Almanac this morning:

The Psychiatrist Says She's Severely Demented
by Bobbi Lurie from Letter from the Lawn: Poems by Bobbi Lurie.

But she's my mother.
She lies in her bed, Hi Sweetie, she says.
Hi Mom. Do you know my
name?
I can't wait for her answer, I'm Bobbi.
Oh, so you found me again,
she says.
Her face and hair have the same gray sheen
Like a black and white drawing smudged on the edges.
The bedspread is
hot pink, lime green. Her eyes,
Such a distant blue, indifferent as the sky. I put my hand
On her forehead. It is soft, and she resembles my real mother
Who I have not spoken to in so many years.
I want to talk to her as her
eyes close.
She is mumbling something, laughing to herself,
All the sadness she ever had has fled.
And when she opens her eyes
again, she stares through me
And her eyes well up with tears.
And I stand there lost in her
incoherence,
Which feels almost exactly like love.

One of my biggest fears is that I'll get Alzheimer's like my maternal grandmother and my paternal great grandmother. I suspect my paternal grandmother has it too though right now it could just be senility. I was young when my great grandmother had it so it wasn't as devastating and I didn't really understand it. I just knew when we'd go to visit her that she'd ask for candy bars from my Paw-Paw (her son) and she'd think I was my aunt. My Maw-Maw was diagnosed with it but thankfully, if you can say such a thing about death, she died before she got to the point where she didn't recognize us. That really would have devastated me as she was my favorite. The last time we saw her was the spring I got pregnant with the Boy. She was in the hospital and we went to visit her. The Girl (who was 2 at the time) climbed up in Granny's bed and sang to her (she loved Granny and of course Granny doted on her since she was the first great grandkid) and we told her we were having another baby. She was excited and happy. OK, enough of that because I'm getting verklempt.

Anyway, my biggest fear is that if I get it I won't die before I go off the deep end and my kids and the Hubs will have to suffer through it. I think initially, before you forget everything, it's worse on the person who has it, but in the final stages it's worse on the people they love. If I get to that point someone just hand me a big bottle of pills please.

Odds and ends:
The Hubs is having some back pain lately and this weekend I tried to give him some Advil because that would make it better. Being the Hubs he said, for guys, there are only two things that fix everything--a recliner and a blow job. If you get a blow job in a recliner you're set for life.

We're getting a new recliner : ) he he