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Watching in the Quiet
I haven’t checked my logs for this domain in ages, but I’d venture to guess that most of the people who have stuck it out and still read what I post here are also people with whom I correspond over email. Certainly, given my inability to post even semi-regularly, I doubt I have any great audience. I would have lost most of those readers years and years ago.
At times like this, that’s a blessing; it saves me from long winded and complicated explanations. I can jump right into the middle of the story, as it were.
My grandmother hasn’t been well for some time, as most of you know. Though she isn’t nearly as sick as she was during the beginning of the year when I was at her bedside constantly—in fact, she isn’t sick at all at present—I’m very aware that she’s fading away little by little. Her mind wanders constantly, she often doesn’t remember faces or names, she needs things constantly repeated, she needs help doing things that were routine to her a year ago, and often convinces herself of things that have no basis in reality or fact. It’s not a happy state of affairs but I’m largely resigned to it; I have to be, as my mom, her daughter, is obviously not. If anything, mom is using her every ounce of energy to remain obstinately in denial—and only making things worse by blaming grandma for not being her old self.
There are times, though, when it hits me that things are even worse than I resigned myself to, and the pain of it just takes my breath away. I just came across her sitting in front of the TV, remote in hand, watching Japanese programming on one of the international channels. She was sitting less than a foot from the screen, volume loud, and watching the over-the-top melodrama with a mildly confused look on her face.
“Why are you watching that?” I asked her.
“I was looking for something else, but I can’t find it.”
“Do you want to watch something else? You could always—I can always put in a DVD for you if you want.” Not so long ago, she would have done that herself, but there was no use of reminding her—or myself—of the things like that.
“No, no, this is okay.”
“But, Grandma, can you even understand that? It’s in Japanese.”
I speak four languages, but I can’t think of a single way to describe how I felt to see her vague confusion disappear as I spoke. My last three words, those three little words, were the fundamental piece to her minor puzzle. I was glad she solved it. But, oh, to be that close to the screen with the volume that loud and not register that crucial bit of information….
I kissed her goodnight, left her in front of the tube, and wandered away to write. What more is there, really, to do?
I may get angry at my own mother sometimes for not dealing constructively with this situation, the refusal to acknowledge the truth of what’s going on behind her very eyes. But, honestly, I can’t condemn her; I’m too far down this path to go back and get some, but denial is a very tempting painkiller.