text: With the amount of time that Wyatt and I spent together, I also grew close with Wyatt’s family, to the point that I became almost a second son to the Plum’s. It wasn’t uncommon for me to join his family for dinners or on small trips and vacations (or Wyatt to join mine). That was how I became acquainted with the 4th resident in the Plum’s household, Wyatt’s grandmother Maw.
  Maw Plum (the simple moniker lovingly used by the family) had spent her entire life in South Dakota. She and her husband Huck (who the family called Paw) owned and ran a ranch that had been a fixture in the Plum family for generations. Given the choice, she undoubtedly would have preferred to remain on that old ranch till the end of her days. Sadly for Maw, she had been fighting a losing battle with Alzheimer’s and dementia in recent years that had made that desire impossible.
  While the standard list of symptoms caused by those illnesses are devastating in their own right, for Maw they came with an even more ominous addition. They had warped her memories, turning the ranch that had been her lifelong home into a nightmare in her mind. I can’t fathom the betrayal of having your own brain turn something you loved so deeply into an object of absolute terror.
  When Wyatt’s father landed a new contract for his company that required him to temporarily relocate his wife and son, they also decided to bring Maw with them. Mr. Plum hoped that a new location, far from the Ranch in South Dakota, would provide her with some peace in what were likely her final years.
  For the most part, the plan seemed to work, and from what I could see she seemed relatively happy. While she never really remembered me, each time we met again for the first time, the kindness inherent in her personality was always on display.
  That isn’t to say she didn’t bring any of those demons with her from the badlands. Maw spent most of her days sitting in the Plum’s sunroom in introspective solitude, gazing out the window. Every so often I would catch her mumbling something to herself, but based on my limited experience with the elderly (my grandparents had all passed before I was old enough to remember them) I just thought that was what old people did.
  Of course, that didn’t stop me from trying to decipher what she was saying. I was a nosey little brat, and after years of catching bits of indecipherable ramblings, I reached a breaking point. One summer day while Wyatt and I were playing outside I decided to break away, sneak back inside the Plum’s house, and see if I could decipher what Maw spoke to the shadows in the room.