I saw her sitting on the threshold to her room, like she's been doing the past few times I've visited her. But instead of greeting me with a quizzical look upon which she starts doing karate chop moves (I don't get it), she sternly pointed at me with her bony, old finger. She's done that in the past as well, but when I ask if I could around her, sit in her room and talk to her (well, more like sit in front of her while I'm looking at my phone), she yammered in her usual Vietnamese. I couldn't understand what she said, I never do, but I understood her tone, and it was ... meaner, more sinister. She didn't want me to go into her room.
That's when the orderly came around. She seemed to at least be familiar with him, although I can't tell for sure because she's unable to communicate with him. (The first several times I visited her at this facility, she was able to speak English. The next several times she started speaking to me in English, then slipped into her native Vietnamese as she, I guess, got tired. She's speaking Vietnamese all the time nowadays.) He tried to convince her to let me in -- "He loves you!" he kept telling her.
Then she did the strangest, and I'm afraid most frightening, thing she's ever done to me. She offered up her hand as if she wanted me to place my hand on top of hers. For some reason, I don't know why, I laid my right index finger close to her hand. She grabbed it with her whole hand and yanked it, and me, towards her, and hard, very hard, so hard that I tipped over toward her. She's still got her grip, I can tell you that. But that was an indication, I'm afraid to conclude, that she has permanently lost it.
The orderly got her to calm down and let me in. Everything was fine, relatively speaking, after that. We ate chips together, she spoke in Vietnamese, I tried capturing what she said on Papago but it didn't work (never has), and I spent time texting ******a to arrange a rubdown right after that. Grandmother's friend didn't get violent or cross with me any time after that. But a couple times she, uh, made noises. She growled once. And once when I was really focusing on scrolling through my phone, she started barking like a dog.
I think I have seen signs of mental decline in her. But it's hard to tell because, like with Grandmother when I was scared she developed Alzheimer's, the language barrier between me and Grandmother's friend made it difficult for me to understand if what she's saying was pure gibberish. (Now that I write that, back when she was speaking in English, I remember her asking several times during a single visit how was my Grandmother, even though she had been dead for at least a year or so at that time.) Memory difficulties, from what I can gather, aren't necessarily signs of full-blown Alzheimer's. Neither, for that matter, are making sounds. But her growling and barking are things she's never done before. Plus, it's strange.
And, finally, when I got up after an hour to say my goodbyes to her, I didn't do what I usually do: Hug and kiss her on her forehead. She wasn't hostile to me as she was when I first showed up, but all through my visit she was ... different.
I don't know what's going on; I will say she's losing it, but I don't know for sure. I want to believe it's just that she was ornery that day. I'll see her again, next month. But if she acts up like this again ... well, let me say that I try visiting her for an hour every time I go down to see her, and maybe I need to shorten those visits if she remains ... different.
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