It's kind of funny, the way habits and senses form a kind of association in one's mind.

Holidays within my core family always varied from year-to-year, but birthdays always meant one thing for sure: Bananas and Jax. Gramma and Grampa would always show up with these around my and my sister's birthdays every year as we grew up, even after we were supposedly 'too old' for such things (not that we felt so personally). It would always be a short visit, not longer than a hour, but it would carry through out the day from the scent of that particular combination of foodstuffs.

This didn't happen in early '98, because Grampa'd had a heart attack the month before and he and Gramma didn't travel so much anymore. Everyone sort of knew what was coming, and in mid-October, Grampa passed away.

Gramma was devastated initially and it took her a long while after that to get used to the idea of living alone. My uncle lived nearby and visited often, and she was given a button for emergencies that might happen while nobody was around, but none of that security made the other half of the bedroom any warmer.

She started a long, slow decline shortly after that, from genetics, apathy and heartbreak. Her vision started failing until she was clinically blind, and she began sundowning, a type of Alzheimer's that intensifies as the day goes on. Eventually it got to the point where for most of any given day, she didn't recognize anything that had happened in the last fifteen years or so. By this time she was in a nursing home she generally hated, or at least the eight-year-old in her who wanted to go and ride her bike hated it. Visits to see her often ended badly, because she always assumed visitors were coming to take her home. The next time my dad and uncle go to see her, tomorrow, they'll begin arrangements to do so.

None of us really have enough to pool together to rent a hall or anything, so after the ceremonies, we're planning to congregate in Gramma and Grampa's house, long since cold. There should be food there, maybe even bananas or Jax. I'm not sure I'll be very hungry.

This terrifies me. It really does.

Sorry, Panda. I don't know what to say.

This sounds very similar to my grandma's case of Alzheimers and Dementia as well, right down to the same situations in the nursing home where it was hard for her to grasp why she even needed the 24hour care. 

Visits would start with general talk and having to explain that who you are, and then she'd recognize you for a few moments "Oh! My boys are here!" with a few happy twinkles in her eyes until she'd ask where she was, and where were all her things, and who were these nurses, and why can't she just go home. 

Then it was "who are you?" again because she's trying to figure out if she even HAS grandkids.  It must be terrifying when your own mind can't understand why it's not working properly anymore.

It's a lot of "tough love" to care for people in those cases, when she's crying that she has to stay and is begging her boys to take her back home, when there's no home to return to anymore... 

Feeling powerless to help her and then having to turn and leave each time was very hard and affected my dad a lot for a while there, because you just don't know how to deal with it yourself much less how to help her deal with it.

It's a tough time for anyone go through, Panda. 
My condolences and best wishes for your family at the ceremony tomorrow.