Responce 4b: How're the Yankees doin?

My grandpa was diagnosed with Alzheimer's a few years before he died. We had put him in a nursing home prior to that for his health had been declining in general. We visited him on occasion, and I distinctly remember one of these visits. It was about half way through his stay in the nursing home. He was doing ok; he was always a quiet man, so it was always hard to gauge his condition through conversation. That day, Grandpa seemed progressively worse. He was always a quite man, but that day he was more unresponsive than usual. We were all trying to make light conversation when Grandpa suddenly asked, "How're the Yankees doing?" I never knew much about Grandpa, but I did know that he was an avid Yankees fan (I consider myself a 3rd generation Yankees fan because of him). My dad answered that they were doing ok, but they had lost a game the day before. My grandpa nodded his satisfaction with the answer and the conversation progressed. Then, about 5 minutes later, my Grandpa asked, "How're the Yankees doing?" My dad looked at him in dismay and said, "Dad, you already asked that" and repeated what he said earlier. Grandpa apologized and thanked him for the answer. Five minutes later however, Grandpa asked again, "How're the Yankees doing?" and my dad answered him. It happened several more times during the course of that visit and my father's responses got shorter and shorter with every repeat. Eventually, my dad just answered, "Fine, dad." Grandpa nodded his head in approval, oblivious and content.



To answer the response question, Alzheimer's robs you of your memories, but you still hold on to parts of your personality till the very end. In the case of my grandfather, he was still a Yankee's fan even when his short-term memory was going. The compulsion to keep asking about the Yankees was embedded in his long-term memory, where our personality and life experiences lie. However, once those go, so does your identity. I believe that a person's identity is based on his passed experiences and development. When you lose memories of those things, you do lose yourself. Or what you once were.