If you get a chance to live with your loved one but on the condition that they would not remember you and not even themselves, would you still take it?

From the time I was eight years old, my grandfather became my dad. He has winter-white hair, always shares his food with his dogs, and never lets a week pass by without cooking his favorite recipe, fried yellowfin tuna. He filled the roles and voids my father could not fill because he was working overseas. He cooked my meals, drove me to school, and volunteered to come with me to school events. Thus, unlike most kids who call their grandfathers Lolo, I grew up calling mine Daddy. He was a person whom my heart could recognize anywhere. Until he forgot my name.

In 2016, my grandfather was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. It is a brain disorder that destroys a person’s memory, thinking, and organizational skills. From losing track of time and forgetting recent events, Daddy started wondering if we had to double lock our doors. The person who never missed a day making silly faces to make me laugh even when I was already a teenager could no longer call my name. It was as if every day that he lived, I was also losing him.

It was tempting to just sit in the dusk, succumb to the pain of seeing him become a familiar stranger. But I knew I had to be his strength the way he had been mine when I was young because I was not the only one aching. Alzheimer’s also made him lose pieces of himself, shrink his understanding of his place on earth, and forget how he graced this world with his existence each day. It was lonely for him, too. So, we let him think it’s Monday even when it’s already Friday. We answered his repeated questions as if it was the first time he asked it. We stopped forcing him to remember us and come back to our reality; we jumped into his new world instead.

Alzheimer’s turns a person you knew like your favorite quote into a book you have never read before. But that does not make the laughs and good memories we shared with them worthless because they only forget who they were, but it doesn’t mean that person never existed. Behind the mist of jumbled memories in their mind, their love for us has always been true.

Yes, it’s rare to have that magical moment where we got to receive a ‘pre-Alzheimer’s’ letter like Noah in The Notebook—something that we can hold on to once our loved one’s memory started to fade like footprints on the sand being washed away by the winds and waves. It’s rare to be able to have the same relationship we once had with our loved one struggling with Alzheimer’s. But we can remind ourselves that they never dreamed of a day when they wouldn’t recognize us anymore, of hurting us like that. We can remind ourselves that they still find happiness in the activities they once enjoyed. They still know what love feels like and still yearn for it, which means we can still help them live a meaningful life and celebrate their remaining strengths. We can still meet them where they are and cherish every interaction. We can remember that our love is not a memory. It can never be forgotten. It’s something we can make them feel every day in multifarious ways, which is all that counts in the end.

So, when Alzheimer’s knocks, bringing us the only thing it could offer, which is a chance to live with our loved one, but on the condition that they would not remember us and not even themselves, let’s take it, no matter how challenging. Alzheimer’s can steal our loved one’s memory, but not the most important thing: their ability to feel love, our capacity to give love, and the life-transforming love can be.