The One In Which I Try To Wrap My Brain Around Illness
February 15, 2009
My grandmother is dying. I’m having a hard time with this. I feel like I should be some sort of expert on loss, having lost my mother as a teenager, but this… this feels so different. I feel strangely neutral about the whole thing.
It’s been a while since I saw her. Since I started this post. It’s taken me that long to process all of this information. I remember my grandmother as an alert, wiry little woman with a sense of humor. She had a loud voice and was a wonder in the kitchen. There were always fun treats at my grandparents house. They have always lived at least a state away from me so visits were scarce, but something that I looked forward to.
I feel like I need to make an effort to go try and see her again this summer, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to see her like she is. She was always well-coifed and clean. She smelled of perfume and wine. Now she smells of filth and piss. Her hair is undone and flying all over the place and her usually pristine clothes have become a tattered and dingy robe.
She speaks and she’s the grandmother that I know and love. Then ten minutes later she’s asking my sister where she lives and she wants to know where my sister grew up. Things that she KNOWS, but has now forgotten.
Instead of the usual jellybeans in the retro candy dispenser there’s now a gazillion baked goods to choose from all lined across the counter, purchased from the grocery store. Each has nibbles taken out from my grandmother scurrying into the kitchen and then taking bites with both hands, furtive glances to see who is watching her. She gets no real nutrition. She fills up on raspberry coffee cake and chocolate chip cookies and sugary scones.
My grandmother used to walk tall and proud. A bit of a rock to her stroll. Now she crouches over her walker and hobbles, slowly, each step punctuated by a horrifying moan and a plea for help for my grandfather. “Ooooooh. Paaaaaullll,” as she goes down the hall. So far she has managed to avoid the stairwell, but I fear for her. I worry about her slipping and tumbling down the stairs that my cousins and I played so many games on, so many years ago.
At night she retires to her bedroom where she thinks that people are living in her bathroom. That they’ve taken over her backyard and are hanging out downstairs. From downstairs in the spare bedroom my sister and I listen as she moans over and over and over again from her bed. Then we hear footsteps going up and down the hall, quickly, scurrying. It’s our grandma. At night she finds herself full of energy and wanders up and down the hallway, moaning, quick and tiny steps back and forth.
I’m not used to this. This trembling in fear downstairs as I worry about her tumbling down the steps. The fear as she holds my baby - that she’ll drop her. She holds Ana in her lap and I hold my camera, but can’t bring myself to take a picture. To remember her like this. I have no pictures of my daughter with her great-grandmother because it’s not the same woman that was MY grandma. It’s not her anymore.
It’s hard for me to accept.
Oh Courtney, I am so so sorry. This type of illness is so heartless and difficult. To see our loved ones turn into people we no longer recognize and worse, when they don’t recognize us. It is a cruel twist of life that should never happen. But unfortunately it does. I will be thinking and praying for your grandmother and you. And take those pictures. Because I feel you will regret not having them later when she is gone. Even if she is not the woman you remember you can always tell Ana the wonderful stories you have of the grandmother she was to you.
February 15th, 2009 at 6:24 pmI’m so sorry, honey. It’s so hard to watch the people you care about and remember a certain way become a person you no longer recognize. I agree with VP, Ana will remember her great-grandma for the person you tell her about. It’s important that you keep those memories. Ugh. It’s so hard. And I’m so, so sorry. And you know where to find me if you need me.
February 15th, 2009 at 6:35 pmIt’s such a heartbreaking thing to see our Grandmas and Grandpas decline. Especially when we have such special memories of them. My favorite Grandma, who was a huge part of my life growing up, is now 92. She is in fairly good health, considering, but she just isn’t the same Grandma who could stand all day in the kitchen making 3 meals a day if we needed her to. I miss that part about her the most because she is who taught me all kinds of things about cooking and loving food (for better or worse). And, I just really loved her company. Now, she’s frail and unsteady on her feet and forgetful. I worry when she holds my baby, too. And when I take their picture together, I don’t really recognize the woman I see. In my mind, she’s less wrinkly, chubbier, healthier. It is hard to accept these things. The best thing I know to do is to talk about the good times I remember with her and try to never forget how much she influenced me and still loves me.
Hope you are able to find some peace over this.
February 15th, 2009 at 7:48 pmHow horrible. I’m so sorry. (hugs)
February 16th, 2009 at 12:31 pmSince I am new here, I am not sure what to say however I will say that I am very sorry you are going through this and am sending lots of good thoughts your way.
February 16th, 2009 at 8:58 pmI’m so very sorry you have to go through this; it is never a pleasant experience, that’s for sure. I hope for you and your family’s sake it goes as smoothly as possible given the circumstances.
My maternal grandfather was much this way — he slowly went off his clock until he was rarely lucid and not at all like the grandpa I grew up with, planting garden, tending his lawn, and playing pool with. Shortly before they went to the nursing home, he started to go funny and it was just a downhill decline from there until he was rarely with it.
One of the last times I saw him, before he slipped into a coma and was near death, was when I took Keston to meet him. For the entire visit, if the subject was on anything else, Grandpa was with the fairies, but if the focus was on Keston or we were talking about him, Grandpa came back to us, was lucid and clear, and grinned huge and had tears in his eyes, the old softie, for his great-grandchild.
I didn’t cry or even feel sad at his funeral, even though I thought I should. I was actually feeling very happy and grateful that a once-great man had made the move on to something better (I hope) and that my memories of him were plentiful and intact. He had ceased to be my grandfather once he went weird, but by then, I had tons of experiences with him built up, so I could weather that lapse and simply realize that his process of leaving me had begun back then, not now at his grave. That brought me some comfort.
February 17th, 2009 at 8:30 amI’m so sorry Court…how horrible this must be for you.
February 17th, 2009 at 11:02 pmIt is so hard. Hang in there and hang onto your memories.
February 18th, 2009 at 8:15 pmSo very sorry. My MIL died just a couple months ago- there is something so otherworldly about the process. hang in there
February 20th, 2009 at 10:26 pmOh, Courtney. I had tears in my eyes as I read this. You described it so well, the loss and the sadness, and the bewilderment. I’m so sorry that you have to go through this, and even sorrier that your grandparents do.
February 21st, 2009 at 10:31 amI’m so sorry, Courtney. I can identify. Which I know brings you no solace in a time like this. But I am so very sorry. Age is one of the cruelest jokes nature plays on us.
I’m sorry for you what you are seeing. When I see my Papa go through it I tell myself that he hates it as much as I do and I know that deep down he knows it’s all wrong. And it makes him sad. Which makes me sad, too. But neither one of us wants to see him go so I’m not sure where to put those sadness feelings.
February 22nd, 2009 at 8:52 pmI wish I had some words for you - not necessarily words of encouragement, because that’s not what you need - but so many others have already left such profound and thoughtful messages.
February 24th, 2009 at 9:59 pmAll I can leave you with is this: the best thing you can do is to write, as you do so beautifully, stories for Ana to read about her great grandmother when she is older. She may not be your grandma as you remember her (though mine is still relatively well I can see her getting older too, and I am anxious) but she is Ana’s great grandmother.
This is just a miserable situation. It’s horrible to watch and I think that we’ve all experienced it to one extent or another. After seeing my Pappap pass away in January and watching my Grandma steadily decline, I dread this happening to my parents.
I support taking pictures, even though you don’t want to remember her this way. You have pictures of her in her prime, but you want to be able to show Ana that she had some (however small) interaction with her Great-Grandmother.
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