I proudly carry her name, Angela Aguilar, like an ambient ember dancing in my heart, glowing with ancestral lineage and love. My Abuelita is 93 years old, a testament to the strength of our Indigenous American, Native Mexican bloodline. She’s a woman whose life has shaped the architecture of our familia traditions. She is the cornerstone of what it means to be an Aguilar, the matriarch we could always count on. Her presence, like a great oak tree, always held a sense of strength, resilience, shelter and warmth. As dementia has now woven its shadow across her mind, my family and I find ourselves walking beside her on one of the most tender journeys of our lifetime.
According to the World Health Organization, dementia affects 10 million new people globally per year. In 2021, there were 57 million families worldwide living with its many forms daily.
The U.S.C.F. Fein Memory and Aging Center discovered that dementia unfolds when nerve cells in the brain lose connection, FTL1 proteins accumulate, and as a result, memory pathways crumble. Entire regions of the brain shrink like dried riverbeds. But nothing that science tells us can prepare the family for how it feels to watch someone you love fade in and out of the present moment like clouds on a windy day.
It began slowly: small childlike quirks, repeated questions, a drifting attention span, loss of short-term memory and a scrambling to identify family names. Over the course of five years, mi familia developed a steady routine of support. We felt confident that, even through this challenging phase of life, we could reliably support my Abuela. However, as she approaches 94 years of age, none of us were prepared for the dramatic and aggressive decline we would face.
Over the past three months, mi Abuelita’s condition shifted sharply. Her memory slipped almost entirely, and conversations evaporated midsentence. She could no longer follow her favorite novelas. She stopped eating, bathing herself and maintaining everyday functions. Fear crept into her eyes, and she grew distrustful, unhappy and increasingly aggressive. Our once-gentle and humorous matriarch began lashing out violently, and with each change, our family dynamics became strained.
Through it all, I kept offering a path of hope: “Cannabis might help her,” the ancestors whispered to me. Every time I sat down in prayer and meditative reverence focused on mi Abuelita, the plant spirits nudged my intuition. Unfortunately, the familia wasn’t ready to try an Earth-grown remedy; fear, stigma and uncertainty lingered like ghosts from older generations.
Dementia doesn’t only alter the person living inside it; it reshapes everyone within its orbit.
We felt the grief first. That quiet, heavy kind of grief that comes before death, when you are already missing someone who still sits right in front of you. As the stress level increased, family tensions surfaced.
Some family members withdrew emotionally; others denied how severe her condition had become. The stress was immense. The house felt heavier, and conversations were shorter. The air was tense in ways we didn’t want to admit.
Questions arose: What’s the right care plan? Should we move her into a care facility? Are we doing enough? Where is the consistent support from the children she brought into this world and the grandchildren she lovingly guided?
Caregiving is holy work, but it can fracture a family before it unites one.
Eventually, the burden became so immense that only my parents’ compassionate, dedicated love beyond measure could manage mi Abuelita’s around-the-clock care.
They stepped into roles that demanded patience, stamina and a kind of spiritual resilience that stretched them thin from exhaustion. I watched us all confronting the painful truth that dementia had taken our family dynamic and placed it under pressure we’d never known.
Then, the breaking point came: Mi Abuelita’s aggression became unmanageable. Caregivers were struggling to manage support, and the nights grew longer.
That is when her doctors approved a progressive decision — one born not out of desperation, but out of love and trust.
We introduced a small piece of Earth-grown medicine: The 4.20 Mini Chocolate Bar Infused with Gold Leaf Gardens Hash Rosin Indica, grown with aloha, and crafted by Evergreen Herbal. We cut the 10-milligram piece into thirds, giving her just one-third each day.
Gracias a Dios, that was the moment the light returned to the eyes of our beloved Abuelita.
The shift was noteworthy. Her aggression softened, her eyes warmed and her curiosity returned. The first night, she slept peacefully, and the next day, she ate a full meal. And for the first time in three months, she allowed caretakers to help her get ready for a new day. She began remembering family names and having clear cognitive conversations again.
Within a week, she was laughing and smiling, something we hadn’t witnessed in several months. She was enjoying her novelas, and we were finally back to our heartwarming reading sessions in which I had the privilege to read her the children’s books she once read to me.
It was as though the plant opened a small window of clarity in the dissolution of fog, where light could pour back into her heart and mind.
To witness this healing — initiated by an indigenous plant medicine our ancestors revered — felt like a full circle moment of reindigenization. Cannabis has carried me through my own wellness journey, and now it has become the gentle medicine guiding the matriarch whose name I inherited. Both the young and the old Angela Aguilar are restored and renewed by our beloved Cannabis.
This is reparation. This is reclamation. This is the spirit of Earth medicine returning home to its people.
Tonight, as I sit with mi Abuelita — her hand in mine, her smile soft as dawn — I feel nothing but gratitude. Her battle with dementia is not gone. The journey continues, but hope has returned, and with it, a reminder, OGs, that even when memory fades, love remembers. Even when the mind wanders, the spirit knows the way home.
