There is something especially painful in watching someone you love forget that they love you.

I always knew this disease could only end in one thing: My grandfather forgetting who I am. And after he forgot who I was, he would forget my mother, his daughter. Then he would lose his wife before, ultimately, losing himself.

It’s a reality I push so far back in my mind I usually forget it’s there. I can’t even begin to comprehend how much it will hurt when he one day looks at my face and only sees a stranger.

And that’s not even the worst part.

Seeing him last summer, it took my grandfather a minute to connect my name to my face. The hug wasn’t as tight.

I tried to figure out if the man I knew as a child was still in there. I saw glimpses of him in his smile, his laugh. But the grandfather I grew up with was a shadow of the one before me.

I wanted to speak to the man who helped raise me. I wanted to ask him: Are you happy, despite the circumstances?

Am I worrying about a man who no longer exists?

But I couldn’t.

I have to live with those unanswered questions — a small burden to carry in comparison to the one he shoulders.

When I spent that week with my grandfather, all we could do was laugh, most often at jokes neither of us made. Our conversations were limited. And where words failed, faint — albeit awkward — giggling often took over.

I don’t know how to unpack this, or how to deal with it. I can’t tell if no longer crying for my grandfather is me accepting the diagnosis or becoming indifferent to it. He lives in Texas, and I live here.

I’m scared the distance between us is allowing me to forget just how much he is forgetting.

I’m afraid I will not realize what that really means until it’s too late.

How can I mourn the loss of a man who is still alive?

There’s no cure for Alzheimer’s disease, so it seems befitting that there’s no remedy for the disaster it leaves in its wake.

The only prescription for this is laughing along with the man in front of me, hugging him tight while I still can.

This disease is hereditary. It’s in my genes.

Just like it’s in my mother’s genes, and my sister’s genes, and my brothers’ genes.

And maybe that really is the worst part.