My grandpa usually talks to me about what the war was like when he was young. He usually talks to me about how he met my grandma and got engaged their senior year of high school. He usually tells me about the funny hairdos and outfits that were the “bees knees” back in his day. He usually tells me the first-hand accounts that I won’t see in my school history books. Sometimes, he tells me a different kind of story, one that he believes has just happened. Once I realize he's about to tell it, he has my full attention. I'm not going anywhere, because I don't know when the next chance will be that I'll get to hear it. 

 

He says that he's at a museum, and he sees a guy about half his age there, looking at all the artifacts and replicas as if he experienced the past events. He looks at the military uniforms as if he knows what war is like. “I know he didn’t though,” my grandpa tells me, “Because he was far too young.” 

 

He says that the young man tells him he's twenty, which is about my age. At this point, while my grandpa is talking to me on his front porch, I’m guessing that he’s about to set me up. But I’m wrong. That’s not the point at all. 

 

We’re on my grandpa’s front porch, but I try to visualize what he’s telling me. He says it all from memory. He has Alzheimer’s, but the thing about his disease is that the moments when he is lucid, he remembers more than he ever has. He only has limited time, and that’s why I refuse to interrupt him. Even though I want to several times. 

 

My grandma died recently. My grandpa wasn’t diagnosed until she passed. 

 

The porch we’re sitting at is attached to the small house that my own mom grew up in. The porch is all rusty, we’re on a dirt road, and my grandpa’s green tractor is not blended in with the grass because the grass is yellow and dead.

 

The dead yard turns into a landing where an old plane is sitting. My grandpa and the new young man in his story are looking at the plane display. My grandpa is quizzing the young man on things he is sure he won’t know. 

 

“It’s got to be The Fountain of Youth,” my grandpa teases him, “There’s no other way.”

 

“I know my planes,” he says, “I’m studying to be a pilot.”

 

“Oh, is that right?”

 

Now, the time comes eventually for the young man to get to tell his story. My grandpa doesn’t stop listening because it gets boring halfway. He’s intrigued the whole way through. He stops listening when the man describes his spouse with the pronoun, he. And he resumes listening when he forgets that the pronoun is he. It’s the moment his Alzheimer’s actually has done something good. He, for the brief moment when the young man is talking to him, forgets his childhood of homophobia, forgets the time his dad hit him for looking at male model magazines for too long in store lines, forgets each comment progressively internalizing homophobia into himself like it was a permanent surgery, forgets that he married his best friend, not the love of his life, forgets that he married who he was supposed to, not who he wanted to. He forgets it all, and forgets why he shouldn’t be okay with two he's together. And it’s what allows him to do what it is most men his age can’t—change after the ripe age of 25. His Alzheimer’s has given him a new life while he talks with this man. 

 

“You guys owned a plane together?” my grandpa asks with genuine interest. They’re slowly walking so that both of them can read all of the small font on all of the displays. Neither of them are skimmers. There’s a red plane with Amelia Earhart’s photo next to it. 

 

“We did,” says the young man. I can’t picture him in my head because by the time my grandpa gets back from the museum, he’s forgotten his face. He gets in front of the red plane, blocking it from my grandpa’s line of site. “Get it?” he asks. 

 

“Haha,” my grandpa chuckles. “You’re lucky they never found her. Or else that would be cruel. But technically since she could still be out there, you aren’t a total jerk.”

 

“She would’ve died by now,” the young man says, reminding my grandpa of his old age associatively. 

 

“Maybe, or maybe she sipped from the Fountain of Youth like you.”

 

“Maybe,” the young man replies. 

 

“So how did you two meet?” my grandpa asks the young man, taking note of the surprise in his face when he asks. How he can remember his emotional expression in that moment but not his face isn’t a mystery to me. It’s simply an example to show that emotions are more powerful than actions. 

 

“Not many people, not many people of your generation ask me that,” he replies. 

 

“Well I’m asking.”

 

“Guess,” he teases. At this point, I imagine what he might look like. Is it weird that I keep accidentally picturing him old like my grandpa? What I end up doing is picturing what my grandpa looked like young and assuming this man looked like him. He has short brown hair with sideburns, a few freckles, and glasses. And he’s wearing the same striped golf shirt my grandpa wore in 80% of the photo albums I’ve seen. 

 

“Oh I don’t know, I’m guessing you met on a dating app? Isn’t that what they all do nowadays?”

 

“Strike one,” he teases. They’re now in an old movie theatre in the museum and a plane is in the middle of taking off on a black and white screen. There’s a ton of people all cheering and a bunch of smoke already in the sky. There are a few chairs right in front of the screen, but they’re the only two people there. It saves them from being shhh’d because they do not stop talking. “We met ice skating.”

 

“You did not,” my grandpa says with his mouth dropped wide open. “That’s how I met my wife.”

 

“There’s a lot of ice rinks, you know. It’s possible to meet doing the same thing.”

 

“I know,” my grandpa replies. “So how’d you know he’s the one for you?”

 

“Because he was the first person to tell me there wasn’t something wrong with me,” he explains. As he does, it’s like the black and white plane going on takeoff turns into the young man’s demo to help explain his love story. He’s the left wing, his future husband is the right one, and when the plane takes off, they’re skating. The plane on the screen, once it goes up, starts tottering. And it’s because the future husband is trying to tell the young man that he accepts him for who he is and encouraging him to accept who he is, and the young man is tottering their plane because he’s hesitating whether or not to believe him. The only way to prevent the crash is for him to simply not lie to who will be his future husband. To tell him he likes him. 

 

But as can be seen from the black and white screen, the plane crashes. 

 

The plane crashing is a symbol for what the young man describes to my grandpa next. He says that he spent a lot of time distancing himself from his future husband. He knew that he liked him, but he was too scared to come out with him, to tell his family and friends. As much as he wanted to be with him, he put others' happiness above his own. 

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My grandpa is hung on his every word. He's invested. "But why?" he asks the young man, "Why wouldn't you do what you want to do?"

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"Why didn't you?" he repeats back to him, giving him chills. 

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When my grandpa is done telling the story, I’m looking in his eyes, waiting to see if he remembers. 

 

No luck. 

 

He’s told me this story twenty times now. The young man my grandpa talks about talking to is him. It’s a version of him that deep down he wants to be. He wants to be the person who in the end ends up putting himself first.

 

My grandpa was diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was just twenty-three years old, and eventually he was able to get rid of the delusions with medication. And now that he has Alzheimer’s, he can’t remember that his story is a delusion.  

 

I would give him his medication, but this delusion is a good one, so why would I do that? I decide to let him have this one delusion. Because if it’s someone else telling him it’s okay to love whoever he wants, he’ll believe it more than if it's only him telling it to himself. 

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To a lot of people, Alzheimer's is a deadly disease. It's painful hearing your loved one slowly forget you and forget who they are too. It's torture feeling like the love you have for them isn't strong enough for them to remember you and all your memories. 

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But my grandpa is a different case. It's more painful seeing him continue to force himself to be someone he isn't. He's convinced himself it's who he is, but his Alzheimer's has freed him. It's washed who he thought he was away, leaving behind the person he's always been.

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A human being and loving grandpa who was once ashamed, but who is now proud of his gay identity. 

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