And That Is That

Abstract

The following work is a memoir that chronicles my grandmother’s battle with a rare form of frontotemporal dementia. This dementia robbed her of the ability to use and process language, though, unlike Alzheimer’s Disease, it did not affect her memory or capacity to recognize loved ones. My thesis follows my family’s journey as we learned to develop new methods of communication that did not rely on words, methods largely dependent on a vault of family memories passed down through several generations of strong women. Ultimately, my experience with my grandmother’s illness enabled me to come to new conclusions regarding the role of language in modern society, from the possibilities it creates to the boundaries it imposes.