On Friday 8/31/2011, my Uncle went missing from the Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Pasadena. On Thursday, we were out on the streets of Pasadena posting up flyers in hopes that someone had spotted him and would call him in. With a heavy heart, I went to bed Thursday night worried that he was wandering the streets of LA alone, lost without a clue of where he was and how he ended up there. You see, my Uncle has Alzheimers.
My Uncle is a great man. He has one of the biggest hearts of anyone I know. I remember the night my cousins and I snuck out in the rain during our visit in Hawaii to go ice skating. On our way there, we got into an accident taking a 360 from divider to divider on the freeway. When my Uncle arrived on the scene, instead of yelling at us and asking why we snuck out, he cupped each of our chins and asked "Are you okay?" demonstrating that our safety was his first priority. That is my Uncle.
I admit that I have not been around him much over the past few years, so when I saw him yesterday, it broke my heart. By the grace of God, someone had found him on Thursday and took him into a nursing home in West Covina where they fed him and gave him a place to sleep. By 6AM on Friday morning, he had left the home and began his journey again. Though he may not have been fully aware of his surroundings nor remember much of anything anymore, I know that he just wanted to be back in the presence of his family and would walk until he found them. We searched the street of West Covina in the early afternoon on Friday and luckily, the police found him in the afternoon, so I rushed to the police station along with my two cousins to pick him up.
When I saw him, I just wanted to give him a big hug. He looked at me and smiled, but I couldn't tell whether he recognized me or not. He looked content, relaxed, and bright-eyed, and perhaps doesn't even realize that he had been lost for the past two days. But I knew, and could only imagine what he had gone through, and my heart ached for him and our family. It wasn't until I was alone in my car did I allow myself to cry, and even now, writing this entry, I continue to cry. Alzheimers is a horrible disease and I know too many people who have family members who have fallen victim to it.
