She had a television,
which made it possible for her to enjoy sports events along with the occasional
television show or made-for-TV movie. She liked sports and you could get her to
talk sports. And, she had my father who slowly adopted a ritual of checking up
on her once-a-day to make sure she was eating, cleaning herself, taking
medications, living comfortably, etc.
Grandmother turned afraid when grandfather left. Her fear quickly went right past anger and hate to suffering. In addition to spinal problems and other physical problems, she blamed herself for her situation and slowly let life become a tragedy she was forced to live from the time she woke up to the time she went to sleep at night.
Sober misery--that's what I think one could call it, when each day feels a bit harder than the last and you really have no one to talk to and take away your pain because the reality is it can't go away.
I expected to walk in to the funeral home and see my grandmother in the casket. I expected to spend time sitting and meeting people who wanted to come to terms with the loss of my grandmother. Asked to be one of the pallbearers, I expected to help carry the casket at some point. But, naively and innocently, I thought the misery and gradual degeneration of my grandmother's mental and physical abilities would likely not leave anybody in too much pain.
There she lay in the casket. It was my grandmother. But it wasn't really my grandmother. It was a body that had been prepared and nicely done up for presentation. My grandmother had been losing her teeth, her hair had been falling out more and more, she had been aging more and more rapidly, and she had been taking a number of medications that no doubt numbed and restrained the unsettling feelings of fear, which ebbed and flowed in her mind and body.
My grandfather who had divorced her came in to pay respects. Or, so the family thought until he chose to stay longer--stay for the entire afternoon viewing. He returned to the funeral home for the evening session. My father sternly informed his father that he did not have to be here. He was convinced he was there to help keep the situation cool between he and his brother, whose mother was the same woman prepared and nicely done up for presentation lying in the casket in the funeral home.
My father's brother had been for the most part missing in action in the last years of my grandmother's life. Largely, my father was left to do the heartrending work that comes from seeing your mother lose her capacity to live. It was he who checked on her, he who drove her around to get necessities and see doctors, he who was there to get her someone to come and live with her and assist her with living, and he who ultimately made the difficult decision to move her out to a nursing home permanently.
He handled the situation at the point where the house needed to be sold to Medicaid so Medicaid could cover the last leg of her life.
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