What a scary situation that must have been for you, Bobby. You were so young to be faced with this and I'm not surprised it left an impression on you. My roommates' sister is suffering from Alzheimers and its not easy for the family to deal with. I do agree that memory exercises and keeping the brain active is a good idea. I do play mahjong online and my roommate chooses to do crossword puzzles. Because his sister suffers from the disease he is afraid it will be passed on to him, so he does all he can to work his brain.
I wish I could make lists of people's names... I've always been bad at names, but as I'm getting older, I now understand why my mother used to call everyone "whats his name", or "you know, the guy from the store" or whatever. I had an aunt die of Alzheimers, but luckily my parents both lived to be old and cranky and other than names, remembered EVERYTHING... That's my goal - to be old and cranky like them... "Hey you kid - get off my lawn!"
I've always been a list maker. The problem is that I sometimes forget to take a shopping list out with me so I can't look at it when I'm in the store. One thing I do now is write down anything I want to look up on the Internet. If I don't, I usually can't remember what it was I wanted to search for. I also make lists of books and authors I want to read so I can look for them when I go to the library. I don't think I'm any more forgetful now than when I was younger, but I always try to write things down rather than try to remember.