‘Are you going to tell them or should I?’
Mom said nothing.
It was early June of 2022, a few months after my eldest brother’s wedding, and my family had gathered for lunch in Brooklyn, near the apartment he had just moved into with his wife. My parents had organized the meal after realizing there was a rare weekend all three of their sons would be in New York. I assumed it was meant to be celebratory. Instead, it was the moment my dad delivered the news no child ever wants to hear.
“It’s Alzheimer’s.”
My mom was 61 years old. She had been struggling for years with mysterious symptoms that no doctor could explain. She’d ask me how my day had been, sometimes three or four times in one evening. She sometimes wouldn’t remember that she’d fed the dog. She had debilitating migraines and was often unsteady on her feet. We had spent countless hours fretting over what could be wrong, but not once did I think it could be early-onset Alzheimer’s. That diagnosis belongs to other families, I thought. Not ours.
Dad was sobbing, but I kept quiet, looking at my brothers and sister-in-law. All of us were still in our twenties, but it was as if the news had aged us; we were caregivers now. Alzheimer’s gave us a name for the thing that had troubled us for years. In the months that followed, all we could do was pray: pray for time, for a cure. I never expected our prayers to be answered.
But a year ago, my family experienced a miracle.