I haven't written in the past month and a half not because of lack of topics but because I have been consumed with family crises. My Grandmother who has lived with me for the past three years has been in the hospital on four seperate ocassions during my winter break from school. She is dying slowly, but as surely as I am certain of most things I have no idea about. I can tell she is slipping away, and as her health declines into the great recesses of there's no turning back, I have to say I wish she'd have the good sense to move on. I say this not with indelicacy, as I honestly don't know how I'll deal without her as she has been one of the constants of my life.
I remember snapshots of her my entire childhood. Her teaching me a song about ducks when I was three. Playing a vast amount of card games with her when I was six. Her calling my house and telling me to come over because she had made my favorite macaroni and cheese when I was nine. Me crying on Christmas day when I was eighteen because on the telephone she told my sister that she loved her, but neglected to say it to me. Her laughing at my jokes about her old friend Vicki, and how incredibly unattractive she is, last year.
But lately these memories have been replaced by moments spent with a woman who acts nothing like my grandmother. She's become angry and impatient in a way to deal with her chronic pain, and failing health. She lashes out at me, at everyone who tries to help. I don't know if it's because of her many illnesses, or a complete lack of ability to cope with not being able to do things for herself for the first time in her life. I just know that the woman who I've been spending so much time with lately trying to ease her back into a temporary state of good health, is not the grandma I know, nor the type of person she would ever want to be. I hope for her sake, it comes quickly. Though selfishly I wish it would never come. that we could go back to playing UNO on that old wooden table in her small kitchen, that she could forever say things to me like "Lordy Miss Agnes", and "Ah, foot!". I am going to miss her, I guess in a way I already do.
