Not over yet

I wrote the section below a few weeks ago after a particularly difficult time for my grandmother and decided not to post it. Two days after writing it I visited her and it was so bad I didn't even want to write about it, which was a first for me. And then this week I went to see her, and much to my surprise, she was doing better. It is difficult to put into context how much better she is doing unless you understand how she was not too long ago. Yes, she still has Alzheimer's and is, quicker than I'd like, losing most of her memory, but she is also still fighting to hang on, and that is worth remembering.

Written on August 7, 8pm:

I think it is all going to be over soon.

The last chapter is being written in the very long, sometimes sad, often funny, story of my grandmother's life. She is currently retaining water at an alarming rate. She is on antibiotics for an infection and is having congestive heart failure. She is the least healthy she's been since being diagnosed with Alzheimers.

I feel sad as always I suppose, for her and for my mother and for what I'm soon to lose, what I've already lost, all of the intangible love that I feel for her that she can no longer comprehend. And on some level, relief I guess, that she might soon be at peace. And then, when I imagine a world in which she no longer exists, I feel panic, at her death and what that means, the deeper meaning that one day my mother will die and I will die and suddenly I'm in a morbid death spiral and the world is ending.

I haven’t seen her in a month, by far the longest I’ve gone without seeing her in the past few years.  The possibility of her not recognizing me when I see her this Sunday is very real, and yet, I am not afraid. I am anxious to see her, hoping for the best but preparing myself for a very different woman to be waiting for me.