I've had a really nice weekend so far. On Thursday afternoon my dad and I went to Vermont to visit my grandmother and a couple of my uncles. This is my dad's side of the family, and I always love taking road trips with my dad. I think it's because we just get each other, and can talk about anything and everything. Plus it's fun to get on his case about which is better - geology or biology :)
This weekend was also challenging in some ways. My grandmother will be 85 in two weeks, and while she's in great shape physically, she's got some dementia and is pretty forgetful. I even hate saying she has dementia, because that seems really harsh and like she's demented in some way, which she isn't. It's just old age creeping up on her.
Even though it was a good weekend, it was frustrating sometimes. I couldn't help but compare her situation to my grandfather's, especially since he passed away only two months ago. Their cases are two extremes - my grandfather's body totally failed him, yet his mind remained pretty much intact until the end. My grandmother on the other hand, is perfectly fine physically, but her mind is failing her. She had a hard time remembering who my dad was, let alone who I was. So I started thinking about what makes a person a person, and what is life all about. In some ways, I think my grandfather had a better situation - even though he lost his physical abilities, at least he retained his mind, and could interact with others, solidly reminisce about the past, and knew who loved him and where he was. My grandma, however, is stuck reminiscing about the past because she has to, and it's the only way she can keep a grasp on anything.
So how do you treat someone who is at the end of their life, and still preserve dignity and respect their personhood? My grandma is funny - she ate four bites of salad, and two bites of fish for lunch on Friday. And she insisted she was TOTALLY and COMPLETELY full. Couldn't eat another bite. Absolutely refused. Not another bite of food could be coerced past her lips. About 2 minutes later, they offered us some cherry pie for dessert. Guess who ate the WHOLE piece in about 30 seconds flat? Yup, my grandma :) And life came full circle for my dad and uncle, as they kept telling her - "You can't have dessert unless you finish ALL your food! Just a few more bites of fish, and then you can have some pie." It was kind of funny, but at the same time, kind of weird. Here she is, an 85 year old lady, and she was being treated like a kid. But her mind is like a kid's mind though. When we'd head back to her room, she'd say - "yup, heading back to 3-0-4, Pat Seaton, S-e-a-t-o-n. That's me! " And then she'd laugh and scrutinize the numbers on the hallway until she came to her room.
The other thing that made me sad is that as her mind goes, the "present" to her gets progressively farther and farther back in time. It's as if memories are being slowly eroded from the present and going backwards. Recently she got a new bed - she went from a double bed to a single bed. We asked her how she liked her new bed, and she said - "yup, it's a single bed now, because there's just one of me. I used to have a double bed, but now there's just one of me. I used to have a double bed, but I don't need it now. I'm missing my husband these days, and don't need a double bed, because there's just one of me." Now my Grandpa Seaton died almost 25 years ago, but to her, going from a double bed to a single bed triggered those memories again, and it's as if it happened recently.
So I don't really know what to make of all this. Even though I think my Grandpa Brownell who died in Feb. had it better, he wouldn't say he did. In fact, he said he hated living that way, having someone do everything for him, even down to showering him and changing his diapers. But I think it must be awful to be my Grandma Seaton, who lives her life and has people show up that she vaguely remembers, and then having these "strangers" sit around with her all day, trying to convince her to eat more broccoli and less cherry pie! How frustrating it must be to remember people as they were twenty years ago, and then to have them show up now, looking different, and telling you that your world is just a figment of the past, and things have moved on. I don't know, I guess either way, life does come full circle. We're born helpless, having others feed us, bathe us, change our diapers, and telling us that we can't eat our dessert until we finish our dinner. And we sometimes leave helpless, having others feed us, bathe us, changing our diapers, and telling us we can't eat our dessert until we finish our dinner. And in the meantime, the rest of us are stuck in the middle, worrying about things that have absolutely no meaning in the grand scheme of things, and we forget what truly matters in life.
I guess that's where grace comes in.
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