A monster in our family

There's a monster that lives in our midst. It is so scary most of my family doesn't talk about it, we try hard not to think about it, and it has been looming and lurking around for for 10 to 15 years or more.
It steals, robs, and slowly kills.
Nothing can stop it, and it makes everyone shudder to think it might appear at their door.
Children and grandchildren cringe to think where it will strike.
If I think about it, I could 'take to my bed' and weep for days---and tremble in fear.
It has ravaged the lives of three uncles I have loved and, especially, my mama's life.

What is it?


Alzheimer's.

It has taken my mama's personality away, her dignity, her sense of belonging. She doesn't know her grandchildren anymore, and will soon forget my brothers' names and sister's name and mine, as well. My children will never know her as she was most of her life; a smart women who yearned to go to college and study art but couldn't afford it, a beautician because it was within her means, a gardener, a delicious baker of biscuits, fried chicken, potato salad, and pies, a farmer's wife, a postal worker, a writer, a Sunday School teacher, a lover of books, and creator of countless pretty quilts:) She loved family next to God, and the Blue & Stewart families were as real to us children as our own. Scotland was our homeland, where we "came from" and never we were never to forget it!
Now she searches for home, yearns for home and her mama, and it's not to be found on this Earth.

So, this fear of the monster---
Do we let that fear overwhelm us, paralzye us, or do we laugh over funny "Mama stories" and live in the knowledge that fear is not from the Good Shepherd?
God will not let us forget Him, or will He? Then again, if we do, I firmly believe He will never forget us--- and that's all that matters in the long run, in Eternity, right?
Because Heaven is where we are restored and renewed, and the monster is no more!!!