Having it All

When I was in third grade, my grandmother was 59, the same age my mother is now. When I was in third grade I thought my grandmother was old and couldn't imagine that she had once been my age. And when I was in third grade, my mother was the same age I am now. And my definition of what is old has shifted greatly in that time, so that now my 59 year old mother seems more like a sister to me, a peer. And my oldest child is now in third grade, and suddenly I am feeling old, questioning if I can still wear leather pants or halter tops, or if those days have passed.

I visited my grandmother this morning, another quick midweek visit, and in being there, I missed my daughter reading aloud a poem she wrote to her class. Her father went and took pictures and sent them to me, and yet I was still so sad to have missed it. Perhaps because of the state of my grandmother, or maybe I am prone to being melancholy, but lately I am acutely aware of how quickly life is racing by. I spent too many years sad and intoxicated and just burning daylight. With sobriety I gained a new found respect for time and that has been amplified in the past few years with the rapid growth of my children and simultaneous deterioration of my grandmother.

I know that my struggle to find balance in my life is neither unique to me nor a problem I will soon solve. I want to have it all, and my idea of what that means has changed drastically as I've gotten older. Having it all, at this stage of my life, simply means spending as much times as possible with my family, while still maintaining a career and meaningful relationships with a few close friends. That's it. That's what having it all means to me.

Everything was all right.

A rare midweek visit to the nursing home left me feeling both happy and saddened by the reality of my grandmother's life. My mother asked me how I found my grandmother, a question we always ask each other. I told her my grandmother was like a book and each time I visited, another few pages were ripped out. There are things she recently remembered that seem to have vanished from her consciousness. We spoke about my brother and when she asked how old he was, I turned the question back on her. She squinted her eyes and brought her hand to her head, clearly searching through the fog that has settled over her brain to find the correct answer. Twenty-five, she guessed. Close, I told her. Thirty-seven. She was a few years off on her own age, which my husband reasoned that sometimes he forgets how old he is too. We talked about a dog she and my grandfather had, a beautiful golden retriever named Mack. I asked her if she remembered when Mack was a puppy, when they first got him. Again, she squinted. No, Blair, but that was a long time ago, that was seven years ago. They got the dog in 1985.

And yet, this was a good visit. She was happy. We sat outside in the sun and Crosby ran around in the grass and picked her flowers. She told me she didn't remember the night I was born, so I told her the story, that she was there and Karla Scherne and the doctor and it was snowing and I was born right there in the house in the middle of a blizzard. She smiled and nodded and said, and everything was all right. She may not remember it anymore, and that's okay, but she enjoyed hearing it. And that was enough for me.

Forgotten

In three days I would have called her. I would have gotten the kids off to school and tidied up the kitchen and gone for a walk, maybe alone with a cup of coffee, and I would have dialed her number and waited for it to ring. For over twenty years I'd made this call. I likely said nearly the same thing every year, knowing it was just the fact that I was calling that was enough. 

'Hey old girl, how ya doing? Just wanted to let you know I'm thinking about you and I love you', is what I said to her every May 7th, the anniversary of my grandfather's death, her husband, the father of her four children. 

This year I will not call and she will not remember what May 7th means. My visit with her today was brief, as it usually is when I bring my kids. She was happy to see us and entertained by the kids as they climbed on her  bed and used the controller to make it go up and down. They hid in her closet and would scream with laugher when one of them opened the door. She smiled and laughed. She did not scold or tell them to quiet down. She has forgotten that she dislikes rowdy behavior. I guess some things are okay to forget. 

Mashed Potatoes?

I went to visit yesterday during lunch, my least favorite time to be there. If I am being totally honest, and what's the point of being anything else when writing, the smells and sounds and sight of all of the old people eating grosses me out. It always smells like urine and brown gravy. My grandmother constantly tries to feed me or my kids if we are there during a meal. At least ten times in as many minutes I had to politely tell her them my two year old son who was squirming in my lap in fact did not want any of her mashed potatoes or creamed spinach. And no, neither would I like you to give him any of the ginger ale from your tiny wine glass. And like a magician, she manages to pull a small  brush out from behind her back and begin to try and comb through the halo of knotty ginger hair surrounding his face. Perhaps if he had napped he would have been more receptive to this, but I doubt it. Hair brushing is on the top of his two year old shit list, right up there with mittens and getting his face wet.

It was one of the more exhausting trips for me. A nursing home is a difficult place to bring children, something I am figuring out first hand. I know I need to learn to accept where she is at right now in her life and not need it to be different, not need her to be someone she simply is not. She is happier now than she was a year ago. She no longer asks to go home or clings to you when you hug her. She does not grasp what her life before the nursing home was and I am painfully aware at what a blessing this really is.

And as always, I am grateful that at least for now, when I walk into that diningroom that offends all my senses, she looks up and smiles and still knows who I am. And she looks happy. And that is all I can ask for.

Fuck Alzheimer's

Sometimes, when your grandmother has Alzheimer's, you have a visit that warms your heart and reminds you of all the good memories. You hold her soft, wrinkled hand in yours and you smile at one another over a game of gin rummy and a plate of cookies.

Today was not one of those visits.

I often struggle when writing this blog with attempting to be open and honest and at the same time being respectful of her privacy. I don't know how well I achieve either. Sometimes one negates the other.

Today she was disinterested in the visit, with my mom and my kids and myself. She introduced my mother and I to people with the same wrong name. I was overwhelmed by the smell of the nursing home. I think I was secretly grateful that she was more interested in bingo than her family.

When we exited the diningroom, tables quickly filling up with wheelchairs holding crumpled bodies, some with sweet smiles, others with vacant stares, I stole glances back to my grandmother's table and noted that not once did she look up. She did not seem to notice that we had left.

I am relieved in a sense that her life there is becoming normal to her and she has ceased fighting it, while at the same time I am heart sick that I am losing her to this fucking disease.

Rice ecru fuck

She's slipping further away. She still knows me, thank god, but her level of confusion is increasing and she vacillates between irritation and apathy. Today's visit was typical of most, we played cards, she ate some of the snacks I brought her, repeatedly asked me to turn off her bedside lamp (her electrical bill was very high she said) and told me in detail about the large animals that jump from tree to tree. She was so gentle when describing them, these imaginary creatures that are alive only in her mind. She was almost peaceful.

I discovered shortly after arriving in her room today that her wheelchair wasn't working. The wheels were stuck. I asked her to sit on the bed and I got a nurse and explained the problem. No, she said, it's fine. No, I insisted, it is not fine, come see. I had dragged the wheelchair into the hallway so as not to upset my grandmother. After a brief back and forth with two nurse it was agreed that she indeed did need a new chair. They said a request had to be put in with PT. That sounded like it would take awhile. I really need her to have a new chair before I leave, I said. I can't have her stuck in her room.

We finished our card game just shy of 11:00 and I knew I had to leave soon and still, no sign of the new chair. I told my grandma I'd be right back and marched down to the nurses station. I was fully prepared to do my best Shirley MacLaine-Terms of Endearment melt down. The nurse who I had spoken to earlier saw me and I think could tell I meant business. Before I could launch into my tirade she said she'd be right down to my grandma's room with a chair. 

Five minutes later I was pushing her down the hall in a loaner chair towards the elevator which would take us to the second floor where Sunday word games were taking place. When we got there the word 'Firetruck' was printed on the large dry erase board and the residents were trying to see how many words they could make from the letters in the word. There was a large list already started and my grandma wasted no time shouting out "rice", "truce", and "ecru". I was so proud of her. And also silently praying that she would not yell out "fuck", as that was the first word my mind made.

When it was time to leave, always sooner than I wanted to, always feeling guilty, I leaned over and gave her a kiss and promised I'd be back soon. No matter how often I visit, it never feels like enough. 

Sent from my iPhone

Ralph

When I was eleven years old, my grandfather died. I knew it was coming. My grandparents had built a house in Florida and the previous fall they drove down there from New York to spend their first season as 'snow birds'. My grandfather's sister and a close friend of theirs, who before moving to Florida had run a hot dog truck in town, had all moved to a small town called Spring Hill. It seemed to be filled with a lot of Irish and Italian New York transplants.

When they left I cried. My insomnia started. I used to sit in class and count down how many hours were left til I had to go to bed. The same year my grandparents left for Florida, my brother left for military school. I was suddenly very alone. I had shared so many meals with them, watched Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy and Mash many nights. One afternoon my grandfather left his spot in the sun resting against the stone wall and sat in my grandparents Cadillac, he in the drivers seat, me the passenger. It had been years since he'd driven. We pretended we were going down to the  Jersey shore to go fishing and eat pizza. It is my favorite memory of him.

I took a trip to visit them with my aunt and uncle and my cousins for Christmas break. I snuck into bed with them in the morning and soaked in the smell of their sheets, so familiar, something I'd missed so much. When I moved to Brooklyn my grandmother gave me a stack of linen that she no longer needed. They all smelled like her, her house, her tidy little linen closet off the bathroom, a mix of Ivory soap and moth balls. I still have some pillowcases from her, but the smell is long gone. We took my grandfather to the beach when we were there and he sat on a bench, unable to move very well. I had never known him to be healthy. He had open heart surgey in 1976 and I was born in 1980. It seems like my whole life he was dying. But I guess we all are, in our own way.

I returned to Florida four months later for Easter break, this time alone. I spent ten days with them, eating and finding lizards in their back yard and watching him for clues. On the day before I was supposed to leave we were in the garage that connected to the house. He fell back against the door and it closed. My grandmother was on the other side of the door telling me to open it, to pick him up. I was eleven and not unusually strong and I was terrified I might not be able to move him. I managed to help him up and my grandma opened the door and we all went back inside.

I returned home the next day and sat on my bed with my mother beside me and I cried. I told her he was so much worse than when I had seen him for Christmas, I told her I thought he was going to die.

My grandparents flew home the next week and two days later my mom and I were sitting at our kitchen table having dinner and my mom got a call. He was in the hospital, she should come now. She called me from the hospital and let me know he had died, less than two weeks after I told her he would. I told her I needed to go to my grandma's house, I had to sleep with her, on his side of the bed, so she would not be alone. She agreed and came home from the hospital and drove me over there. I slept next to her that first night, holding her hand, protecting her.

I look at her now, diminished, broken down, confused, and I feel terrible, like I should be protecting her again. Like I have failed her. My eleven year old self would be shocked that I allowed her to be put in a nursing home. It was never my plan and yet here we are.