As my grandmother fell deeper into Alzheimer's, my family and I slowly had to get used to the fact that our Rose was not what she used to be. Normal family gatherings began to transition into shifts of watching poor Rose, and suddenly fixing Grandma's world felt hopeless. But, more often than not, she somehow seemed to pull through. So here is a short story for her entitled, Grandma Rose.

Nothing. Zero. Gone. Those three words were my grandmother’s favorite to say, at least they were her favorites on the day I had to watch her while my mother was at the grocery store. Grandma always had to be guarded once Alzheimer’s disease took hold of her brain. I thought it wouldn’t be too difficult to watch her, as all she did was slump her 76-year-old-self in her one-hundred-year-old rocking chair, and blankly stare at the television.

But I soon learned that keeping an eye on Grandma is not so easy.

“You see that TV?” Grandma asked, as she slowly slid the television remote out from under the blanket resting in her lap.

“Yes Grandma, I see the TV,” I said. She began to move her wrinkled fingers to the top of the remote, and then turned the TV off. Just as the screen went black, her droopy expressionless face peered over at me. “Nothing. Zero. Gone.” She said.

Not again.

That was the fifth time on my watch that she compared something to zero—first her chair, then her lunch, then her picture of her sister, then her cloths and now the TV—all zeros. I couldn’t help but get a little freaked out; after all, her house gave the faint aspect of a horror movie. Small, full of cob webs, and the paint was peeling off the walls. All that was missing was the high-pitched violin and the lightening.

I had to leave my post on the couch to use the bathroom, even though my mom told me not to leave grandma alone. The bathroom, only five steps away, might as well have been on Mars. On second thought, Mars seemed closer. I couldn’t keep my legs crossed any longer. Grandma hadn’t got up from her chair in hours, I reasoned, five steps wasn’t that far, especially if I left the door open.

“I’ll be right back, grandma,” I said, already half way across the room.

“Okay Jane,” she said. Casie sounds like Jane, sort of. As I was washing my hands, I heard the crash of the front door closing.

Reinforcement! Finally, mom’s back. I darted into the living room but then stopped cold. The horror movie chill surged as I eyed the empty rocker. Zero Grandma Rose. I bolted outside into the pouring rain, the sky was dark and cloudy, and the rain was so heavy that I could not see a thing.

“GRANDMA!” I screamed. “Grandma, where are you?” I flew down the porch steps and out into the road. Right. Left. Nothing. I was a zero. The rain soaked me head to toe. As I fumbled into my pocket for my phone, I dropped it on the slippery cement road as I tried to call my mom. I sprinted down Helen Street to the line of mail boxes, she wasn’t there. She was gone.

Why did I leave her alone? I could hear my mom’s voice echoing in my mind. Don’t leave grandma alone, not even for a second. She’s a runner. I began to turn back towards the house, when I saw a blurry figure sitting in the plastic chair on the porch. I jogged towards the house hoping and praying that it was Grandma Rose, and it was. Wherever she wandered off to, somehow she had found her way back to her creaky old house she called home. She was soaked and she sat silently.

“Why did you come outside?” I said to her in a hoarse voice.

No answer.

“Let’s go inside, grandma.” I said, and with that she got up and followed me inside without saying a word. Nothing. Zero. Gone.

Even though the light at the end of the tunnel never seemed to arrive with Rose, I noticed that Grandma never really ever left us. She continued to fight her own mind everyday to find the simple pleasures of enjoying the loving family that surrounded her. Her braveness, her strength, and her willingness to always find her way back home was something she carried with her since birth; and that is one thing this disease never took away from her.