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I take parts of people, usually snippets from photographs, and hold those to my heart. What they've become now almost doesn't matter, because they touched me at crucial developing parts of my life and these core memories can't really fade. They made us feel safe, loved, and worth loving.
My grandma was a proud sweet woman with a hard wit, and a sharp tongue to match. She cooked the best meals I've ever had, and no one on this earth can come close to matching what she made. War survivor, refugee, early widow, she raised her kids into functioning adults and then raised their kids when they didn't have time (or desire, in some cases).
Her mind slipped towards the end, and then the corona crisis overloaded the NHS and she no longer could get her regular checkups. We looked after her ourselves, but that required changing her familiar setting, and that slipped her harder. Right before the end she was a mewling baby, cognitive and physically, and I had to clean her a few times myself like she was my child.
I choose not to remember her like that though. That's just a small bad episode in her life where she wasn't quite herself. When she was herself, she was a proud lioness deeply entrenched in the politics of her family and culture, and that's how I'll remember her.