Grandma doesn't live here anymore
Grandma’s roommate is crazy. I don’t mean to be harsh, but the woman wanders around in her wheelchair, asking for help in putting on her shoes, searching for her mama, and muttering in a low but gravely voice. She wants my grandmother to help her, and it’s hard to turn down those insistent, plaintive demands.
“She’s crazy,” Grandma tells me, laughing a little. “God bless her. Crazy as a loon.”
After a series of mini-strokes about a month ago, Grandma’s condition deteriorated enough that she needed to be moved to an assisted living center. It’s been a difficult choice for my mother, but Grandma’s short-term memory is very limited. She needs to be constantly monitored, but she’s not like the other lost souls in her Alzheimer’s wing where she’s got a room.
Luckily, she’s got a good attitude about the whole situation. She knows Mom can’t handle any more stress. So she tries to be patient: she eats her three meals in the cafeteria with the other patients, she listens to live music, she attends craft programs.
But I wonder what she thinks about when she’s lying in the dark, trying to get to sleep.
Does she think about her life as the child of a cotton farmer in West Texas? Her marriage at the age of 16 to a preacher man, the birth of her two children, the miscarriage of another? Does she think on the loss of her first husband to lymphoma, her marriage to a widowed preacher, and his death after 30 years of marriage? What of all the vacations she took to research the family tree? Of her son, the scumbag who swindled her out of her life savings? Of her daughter, dealing with the effects of bipolar disorder? What about her 8 grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren?
I found myself wishing that, as our elders aged, they'd also get smaller -- shrinking to the size of babies so we could have an easier time taking care of them. Don't most babies look like old men and women anyway? (Except Suri Cruise.)
On my way home, I started crying. I hated seeing Grandma like that, knowing she’s on the final leg of her journey. This woman was the key ingredient to building my self-esteem when I was a kid. She loved me unconditionally. She made me feel special. I felt helpless, wishing I could do something to make it easier. Is loving her enough?
I don't like facing the reality that most of us are destined for such a place. I hope I'll have to grace to be gracious, just like Grandma.
2 comments:
Bless her heart. Watching our loved ones come to the end of their lives is difficult no matter the ailment. But I think dementia, whatever the source, makes it twice as difficult. I remember my grandmother. Near the end of her life Alzheimer's stole all her memories except for the very earliest ones.
Weeks before she died she kept calling for her mother. I couldn't help but think that she was in her mind a small child perhaps an infant calling for her mother. The worst part is that her mother never came. This has got to be hell or purgatory (for us Catholics). I can't imagine how it must have been for her to call and never have her mama come to her.
For these reasons is why I'm shooting for heart disease. Let a great big stroke or a massive heart attack take me. Unfortunately I fear that I will be like my grandmother and be lost in the fog of my memories. I remember that my grandmother didn't want to die from Alzheimer's. She feared that more than anything in her life.
My heartaches for you and your grandma. Your grandma has lived a long and fruitful life. I'll pray for a swift death for her. As much as we would miss our loved ones I don't think we can hold on to them beyond what God wills.
Life is like a cocktail party. It's a group of people milling around in a great big group talking. But people enter the group and others leave the group. The group has a life of its own. Constantly shifting and changing life is made interesting by this ebb and flow.
The above is not an original thought from me but as you know I can't think who said it. Pastgrace
I'm really sorry, Queen.
I didn't really know my grandparents well enough for them to have an impact on me. I was always jealous of people like you who did.
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