Dear friends,

My mom Gladys Montenegro and I, were planning on participating on this ALZ San Diego walk together in October 2022, using her "transformer", her walker that transforms into a chair.
Mom couldn’t make it in person, as she passed away June 10th 2022, but I have been walking each year since to honor and remember her.

My mom was an incredible woman, who was born with a congenital heart disease called scimitar syndrome and with dextrocardia, which caused her heart to be turned around inverted and towards the right, taking part of her right lung space, reducing her lung capacity. My grandparents were told she would only live to age 5, instead by age 12 she would steal her older brother’s bike, which was too big for her and go with her friends to do tricks in the bikes and climb on trees and roller skate. By age 17 she was already working as a secretary in city hall, taking dictations, and also starting to lose her hearing (due to the same congenital issue).

She had a humble but very happy childhood thanks to my grandparents, and when she was working and studying, she fell in love, got married, and had her only child, me, with a lot of difficulty, given her health issues, and after several miscarriages I was her miracle baby.
And maybe because of that, or because she suffered more than 20 years of domestic violence and mental abuse at my father’s hand, until the divorce was final. My mom was able to raise me almost on her own, working double times, when there was not enough money to pay for rent or food, and she would still find a way to show up at my school activities.
My mom managed not just to protect me and teach me to be a strong and capable woman, but to be compassionate and to help others, because we all deserve kindness.

This amazing, active, intelligent, hard working woman was studying English for her citizenship test in her 70s, when we noticed that instead of improving, she was going backwards. And she was walking back home in NYC when she almost got lost twice just a couple of blocks away from home, and we learned she was showing the first symptoms of Alzheimer’s, her official diagnosis came during the pandemic, once we were living in San Diego little after she was diagnosed also with COPD (due to her half lung, she was not a smoker), and in January of the same year with severe spinal stenosis, since then her health was declining, and yet, we would still be very hopeful, because she was.

I am telling you all this not so you feel pity, but so you understand that even with all the cards played against her, all her life. She was a ray of sunshine. When we got to the pulmonary ICU of UCSD, the last weeks of her life, she invited one of her nurses to dance, while also complementing his smart daughter, told another nurse what color suited her best, and told another one she was so pretty she should be on a reality show... or actually she was too pretty to be on TV, they wouldn't deserve her.. My mom lifted up the spirits of 3 of her nurses in one single day, a day just before she was placed on a ventilator.

This is the kind of woman my mom was and it has been my greatest honor to be her daughter.

The name of our website is: LOVE LIFE NOW

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