First Time I've Talked To Grandmother Since She Was Taken Away

I've been meaning to ask my sister for her help in this, but it came up last night when we were driving home and had an argument about her forgetting all the things since leaving Minnesota.  She kind of brought up the fact I have never spoken to Grandmother since the day she was whisked away to Hong Kong.  With that, I decided to ask for her help in calling her the next night after we buy a calling card.

She did me one better: Grandmother's contacts, namely her daughter-in-law and the maid who takes care of her during the workweek, have Skype, so we should call her as soon as we got home.  Even better.

I was girding myself to know how she's been in the almost two years since she was taken from the country.  When I have my phone and Internet I rarely put it down these days, but as soon as my sis hit the call button I turned it off and waited with held breath to connect.  Will she remember me?  Will she remember anything?  Will she immediately accuse me of taking her money?  How bad is her Alzheimer's -- if she even has it?

The Internet connection was noticeably bad yesterday, probably due to the wind.  (I have no idea if DSL is affected by weather conditions, but it seems as if our Internet is slow whenever it's bad outside.)  But after tweaking the country code defaults, we caught her daughter-in-law's mobile.  They were having lunch.  My sister made a little small talk with her, but she knew she wanted to talk to Grandmother.  And, yes, she was there, and yes, we -- well, my sister -- spoke with her.  She appears to be in good spirits.

Sister introduced me to her and I tried, in my broken Chinese, to say hi.  (Sigh) she recognized me.  The language barrier didn't help our communications, nor did the delay in Internet communications, nor probably did the noise in the restaurant, but we spoke to each other.  The only thing I found weird was that she asked about where our parents were twice.  (We told her Las Vegas; that is a lie.)  So maybe her short-term memory is shot.  But after we hung up I feel a lot better that she's in relative good health and in good hands.  And now I can stop feeling regret and shame for not ever speaking to her.

Oh yes, and this means I need to get Skype too.