spynotes ::
  April 02, 2007
You don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows

Tuesday of our vacation, we went to see my grandmother at the assisted living home where she lives. The last time I saw my grandmother in person was a year and a half ago and she was just beginning to show the first signs of Alzheimers. At first it was just time she couldn't get her head around. She was her usual self: eccentricly elegant, whip-smart, social, occasionally irascible, particularly when she hadn't eaten in a while. But any discussion of time was lost on her. She had no concept of duration, of what came before and what came after. She didn't know what the time of day meant. Three p.m. could be the middle of the night or breakfast time or bedtime. It was such an odd anomaly in the mind of an otherwise intelligent woman, that it was easily overlooked. But in hindsight, we should have paid more attention. There had been other signs. Her lack of activity. Her penchant for wearing the same clothes several days in a row. She'd always taken such care with her appearance. It was not like her.

Since then, my grandmother has been in a state of mental decline. I've talked with her on the phone and I've had many conversations with my mother about her, so I knew what to expect. Still, I didn't really know.

It was, like every day of our vacation, a beautiful sunny day. We had spent the morning with AJ at a children's museum and had a nice lunch out with midday wine. It was partially celebratory, although for my mother it was, I think, preparation, a steeling of herself for the visit.

We arrived at my grandmother's home and could not find her. The place is lovely and homey -- not at all hospital-like. The residents, many of whom have impaired memory, are very social and are usually found in the public areas of the building. We went up to my grandmother's room and found it empty. My mother took a pass of the room. My grandmother's things were in all sorts of odd places. It seems that she can't work the coat hangers, as she had shoved all her clothes in odd corners. After settling AJ in front of cartoons, I spent the next twenty minutes hanging all her blouses and jackets and folding her clothes back into dressers and shelves. We tidied the bathroom while my mother went to look for my grandmother. They returned a few minutes later, my grandmother all done up in curlers. She'd been in the beauty shop and was in the middle of a perm.

From the moment I saw her, I could see she was not the same person. It was her eyes, which do't quite focus on you and look very far away. After we left, I realized that seeing this physical change in her was oddly comforting, as if it explained the mental decay.

We introduced ourselves and told her over and over again where we were. She seemed most confused by me, not because she didn't know who I was, but because I think she'd been expecting me to be a child. And she kept saying "Someone is missing," but she couldn't remember who until we figured out she meant my brother. She remembered my brother was living in Asia, but she didn't connect that memory with the person who was my brother, if that makes any sense.

She had to get back to the beauty shop to finish her perm, so my mother and I walked with her. The beautician was giving a man a haircut, so we sat down to wait and talk.

My mom was better at conversation than I. I struggled to think of things to say that could keep her talking. But my mom is much more practiced. I watched my grandmother's profile, still noble, still beautiful. She was a rare beauty in her youth. I remember the first time I found a picture of her in a drawer in my aunts' old room where my brother and I used to stay when we'd visit my grandparents at their old house in Michigan. "She looks like a movie star," I said and my brother nodded. But I love the look of her face now, the angle of her nose, her forehead under the frizz of her permed hair. But those eyes. They are somewhere else.

Sometimes it's clear that she's still there, beyond the fog. Her vocabulary is as immense as ever. And some of her catchphrases are still in place ("Where the dickens do you live again?," she asked my mother for the umpteenth time). At moments, she is clearly grasping for a thought that eludes her. "I can't quite get it," she said in frustration.

After a while, it was clear we were tiring her and it was time for her hair to be rinsed out. We hugged her goodbye, gently. She said goodbye to my mother first than me. Then she tried to say goodbye to the bewildered man in the barber's chair. She remembered that there had been men with us, but, since we'd left them in the room, she was confused and thought he must be one of them, even though she didn't remember him. We redirected her and said goodbye once more. In the hall outside, my mother choked back tears. I felt strangely calm, perhaps because it was all as I'd expected. But also, it was because except for a few moments of frustration, she seemed happy. The beginning of the memory loss was more frustrating for her because she was so aware of what was happening. Now she is resigned because she has to be.

My mother is less resigned. She is tense and anxious and tired and very sad. It is hard to watch, especially when I'm too far away to be of much help. And it's hard not to think about what will happen when it's my turn to be in her shoes. How will I react? How will she? She has already warned me that she has no intention of going gentle into that good night and I would expect nothing less of her. Then there is my grandmother, with her shining eyes, looking beyond all I can see. I should say that the visit was the one cloud in our sunny vacation, but it doesn't feel like much of a cloud to me. There were no clouds in those eyes, only in her memory. My mother's sadness feels more weighty than a cloud, more substantial.

At night in bed I wondered what happened when my grandmother returned to her room. Was she surprised to find us gone? Did she remember we were there? What about the clothes, all back on hangers? Did she notice? Could she figure out what happened if she did?

This afternoon I found an envelope with my name on it written in my grandmother's spidery hand. It was full of newspaper clippings and articles from The Economist with underlined passages and questions scrawled in the margins that she wished to discuss with me. "I wish you'd explain this to me," she wrote in an article about music, "because I don't think that I agree. What do you think?"

She can't read much anymore. Her eyes bother her and she can't always remember where she started. My mother has been reading her stories when she goes to visit. It soothes both of them. I can't explain much to her anymore either, or at least, if I try, I'll find myself explaining it again and again as if it had never happened. I am tempted to write her a postcard. In the margins I'd scrawl a message. "I wish you'd explain this to me because I don't think that I understand. What do you think?" I think there has been a change in the weather. The barometer arrow is shaking and we're not sure which way it will blow next.

2 people said it like they meant it

 
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