A personal reflection on dementia

By Erik LoyErik Loy is a baritone in newVoices and is an attorney for Manitowoc County. He shares his memories of his grandfather, George Olaf Loy.My Grandpa was a quiet man. He worked for a machine tool company (Ingersoll Rand) and was very skilled. After he was retired, the company sent him all over the country to fix factory machinery because no one knew it better than him. He taught me to love baseball, coin collecting, and fantasy novels featuring Tarzan of the Apes and Conan the Barbarian. He had a set of about twenty Tarzan books that I read voraciously. Conan was a particular favorite of his that I still enjoy. Conan, for the uninitiated, is a very muscular dude who wears nothing but a furry pelt to cover his loins. He is very strong, a master swordsman, can climb anything, and (pelt and all) is incredibly attractive to women.Grandpa started getting Alzheimer’s when I was about 9 or 10. The first sign was that he went for long walks. He was also agitated. He would sometimes get angry with my Grandma. After a while, he started walking and wouldn’t come back. Family would have to drive around and find him. It was like he was trying to escape from something that wouldn’t let him go. As time passed the agitation and walking decreased and he communicated less and less. The moments where he was himself became fewer and fewer. There were some things, though, that drew him out. He loved to show off his coins and he enjoyed books about Conan the Barbarian. When we gave him one, he would quietly read it, totally engrossed.He continued to decline, eventually being confined to a wheelchair. My Grandmother took care of him at home and refused to let him go to a nursing home. After several years he finally escaped, and my grandmother proved to be as strong as Conan.