I've been concerned for her health ever since we got back from Italy. For some reason, she's gone downhill. Physically she's fine -- she can still walk, though she uses her cane more and more. And many of the things one does to survive -- known as Activities of Daily Living in the parlance of geriatric services -- she can do, including bathing and feeding, though she needs more and more help from me.
It's the forgetting that has me really worried. Starting this summer, but accelerating the past few weeks, she's been speaking as if her thoughts come at her hazily. She asks me questions, then asks them again later in the day. When she speaks to me, she repeats details several times, like after My Fucking Father yelled at her last Sunday. Increasingly she has walked over to my room several times a night to ask for help -- sometimes for the same thing. I love her, but I've become both more irritating and more bothered by her mental state. She at times remains lucid, but if she has to recall something, she is more and more lost.
She came over to my room again last night. I tried to be patient, taking a deep breath as I try to understand her ramblings, made even more unintelligible since she was speaking Chinese words I had no hope of understanding. But instead of unconnected thoughts, she repeated something to me that finally sunk in: She's having a friend take her to visit a nursing home. She told me earlier in the week -- just to look, just to look, she emphasized -- but what she said next chilled me to the bone: "If I'm going to the nursing home, you no longer will have any PCA money because you're not taking care of me anymore."
In this Season Of Drastic Change, this one hurts as much as finding out my parents are closing The Store. I do not want to see Grandmother go. She's been with me as long as I've been living at home, which of course is a long time. When I was coming home from school, because my parents were working, I came home to her. When I was upset that my brother hit me, I ran to her. She's been my rock. As I've before on this blog, she's my one true love in my life.
And yet I don't know what the future holds. What if she's no longer able to feed, dress or bathe herself? I want to stay home and help her, but PCA money doesn't pay shit, and recently I've had my hourly wage cut -- stupid fucking teabaggers. I need to go out and find money now that everything is changing here. That means I have to leave her home for most of the day. She seems fine, but these incidents may escalate; My Fucking Father blurted out once that she was going to burn the house down. And he's the main thrust of all this: I think Grandmother is so fed up with him yelling at her that she thinks it's time to leave. I understand that, but I could only feel a profound sense of loss. If she leaves, there is a gaping hole in this house and in my life.
And then, I'm afraid to admit, I felt this burn through my face. When she said that I could no longer be paid to be her PCA, that's when I got really scared. I have no income right now, besides the occasional experiment I pick up. With that money gone, meager as it is, there's nothing. Well, there's unemployment, but the teabaggers took that from me, too. I would be so fucking lost without helping Grandmother ... I don't know what I'd do.
And then I realize that I was really worried about me, and not her, and then I got more depressed over the guilt for being so self-centered and immature. Why can't things be just the way they were? It was perfect then. No fighting. No forgetting. No worrying about money, or the future. No changes whatsoever.
Grandmother then went onto stuff I couldn't understand. Already floored by the news, I started to get run down; fatigue always sets in when I'm bored with a conversation. But she stood at my doorway, not even standing down, telling me all this stuff, including My Fucking Father's threat to drive me out of the house after Grandmother.
She needed to sit down. I needed to lie down. So instead of continuing a one-sided conversation that could go on for an hour, I coaxed Grandmother to her bedroom. And then, because I was afraid of what might happen if her plan to visit a nursing home went further, I decided to curl up on her bed, take my glasses off, and lie down. I was prepared to just be there while Grandmother went on and on, nodding on and on, just being someone to talk to, even if I couldn't make out a thing she was saying. What I really wanted to do was sleep beside her.
I slept with Grandmother when I was young. My brother and I, in fact. I am typing this portion of my blog post from My Father's computer room, which way back in the day was our bedroom. My brother and I didn't think it was weird at the time, sleeping with someone fifty years our senior (let alone each other). But every night we'd pile into bed, Grandmother between both of us. I don't know why we didn't think it was sort of strange then, but we grew up doing things differently than other families, of that I'm sure.
I think that's where I got competitive over Grandmother's affections with my brother. I loved being embraced by her, whether it was having her arm across my chest or bearhugged from behind. I felt secure, loved when she enveloped me. I think that's how my bond with her was forged, a bond which, despite my frustrations over her maddening behavior through her old age, has not really been shaken.
I had to grow up; obviously it would have been fucking weird if we were sleeping in the same bed when I'm 35. But if this is The End -- and my God I hope it isn't -- I wanted to show her how much she means to me, and I also wanted to recapture those good times of my childhood.
So Grandmother started talking, and I responded with a "yep," or a nod, but then I got too tired and I just closed my eyes. I didn't want to turn my back to her, but she could see that I was about to go to sleep. So she said, "If you're tired, go to your room."
"In a bit," I said, "Turn off the light."
She knew what that meant; thankfully, in the interest of my sentimentality, she didn't care. She turned on her little nightlight, then turned off her big nightlight. She laid back on the bed and threw the end of her blanket over me. And with that I was transported back to 1984.
Grandmother didn't stop talking, however. She continued to go on about ... well, I don't remember, and I don't think it mattered in those circumstances. I think the last thing she said before I drifted off into unconsciousness was something about Father cooking something the next day. Whatever, who cares, I'm sleeping next to Grandmother. Just like old times. And for the first time in a long time, I felt safe, secure, and loved. Like nothing will happen, nothing will change, and that everything is perfect as it is and should be.
I lasted 45 minutes before I went back to my room. I'll remember that nap with Grandmother forever.
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By the way, she seems to be doing better the past 36 hours. Still batty, but more lucid. I think it's the pain that makes her loopy and needy.
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