My Grandmother passed away today. Man, it feels strange to say those words. To talk about someone who's been around your whole life, now you suddenly find yourself speaking about in the past sense. It happened very peacefully and she was surrounded with family sharing stories and just general conversation. If she was listening, I'm sure this is what she would have wanted. You see, my Grandmother was suffering from Altzheimer's Disease. So the last recollection of my grandma was around 1997. I believe she's finally at peace from this horrible disease.
After leaving her care facility, Jen and I drove home. Very little was said. When I got home, I mostly sat out by our back swing-bench. Libby came out and we talked about what happened and I shared stories about the Grandma Mary that I grew up with. Perfect blue sky, snow capped mountains in the background, it was a nice day for reminiscing. While I was talking about Grandma, Libby took this picture of an apricot blossum blooming in our backyard, which will be my blog main page graphic for the rest of this month.
It was tough on times when I would visit her. I didn't know how to have a conversation with her. It was a lot of nonsensical, random, conversation.
Sitting and thinking about my grandma reminded me of a music video from Elvis Costello called, "Veronica". Elvis's spoken intro and outro pretty much sums up similar incidents that I witnessed my grandmother going through. This video is tough to watch, especially when you see Elvis sitting in an empty bedroom and he is imagining all of Veronica's life.
"...something we don't quite understand.....not yet anyway".
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3 comments:
My grandma has Altzheimer's too. It is a cruel and painful thing to watch someone you love be physically there and yet not really there. I miss my grandma already as I'm sure you have missed yours over the last decade. May you sense HIS peace as you mourn your loss.
Thanks Elissa. It's strange to feel so sad yet feel a strong sense of relief. With her passing, I can't help but to think that's she's her ol' self again.
She is finally reunited with many men in her life that left too soon; her dad (lost at age 12), her first husband (from lukemia at 40 something), her fiancee (helicopter crash within weeks before their wedding), and her second husband of 39 years (who died 10 years ago from lung cancer).
Unfortunately, I resisted to visit my grandmother over these past 7 years. Seems like everytime I'd see her, I'd loose a bit of my memory of how she used to be. I'm not sure if that's immaturity on my part or being resistant to the reality of the situation. How to you respond when you're given a nonsense remark? I had trouble playing along with it. You didn't want to correct her, because that would cause her to get aggitated. Crazy mad is worse than crazy calm.
My only advice is to keep visiting her frequently. The more space between visits only makes her loose her memory of you more. She may forget your name, but she might know it's you.
Mom, if you're reading this, maybe you could respond to this comment.
One thing I have to share. Through all of this, you had to find humor to get you through the sadness of the situation.
Upon one visit to the special Alzheimer's care facility (meaning everybody residing in this assisted living facility had various degrees of dementia due to Alzheimer's), my daughters were with us. The whole family was there and I believe it was my grandmother's birthday.
We were all on the outdoor patio visiting with grandma. At one point my aunt decided it would be nice to have some snacks around. There was some discussion earlier about a recent Costco purchase of Planter's roasted peanuts.
My daughter Allison was sitting very close to me on a bench a few feet away from where everybody else was sitting. Every visit to grandmother's "crazy farm" kind of freaked her out.
My aunt gets up and states, "I'll be right back. I'm going to go get some nuts". Allison, without missing a beat says under her breath, "you won't have to look very far".
Allison was 11 at the time. Yep, my very witty daughter. It was very hard not to laugh out loud, as I tend to do when I'm uncomfortable.
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