It's been a tough weekend

[swatkat]

I had been visiting my grandfather. He suffered a cerebral stroke yesterday - his second - and is quite ill. I'm not sure if he'll make it this time; and even if he does, it won't really amount to much. He's very old, and while I know that we've been lucky to have him with us all this while in the first place, it's still horrible to see him suffer like this. I came back, because there's no point in my staying - my dad's still there, handling things.

The kittens though, are brilliant. *g*

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[nell65.livejournal.com]

They boys and I just visited my one remaining grandparent, my mother's mom, in her care facility. At 90, she is now wheel-chair bound, diabetic, arthritic, and in the most basic way, disappeared from our sight long ago as she wandered down the road of senility.

I'm reasonably sure she has no idea who my mother is, much less me, though I am her eldest grandchild and was named for her - and she no longer has even the ability to understand that my sons are her great-grandsons if only for a moment.

We went up to visit her room, and she picked up a photograph of her and a few of her sisters, taken about ten years ago, and stared at it with the most amazing concentration, and I believed she was struggling hard to find a memory to place the people she saw. There are also several pictures of my grandfather in his WWII naval uniform - and I don't think she knows who he is. And they had a very good marriage, and were close friends who read and travelled together with great joy before his death almost twenty years ago.

Driving back to my folk's house, my mom and I talked about how our society has yet to get a grip on our ability to keep people's bodies alive when no person seeing how my grandmother and the others up in her locked, third floor 'memory impaired neighboorhood' live wants to end up there. My mother said that at this point, pneumonia would be a kindness.

Not everyone ends up this way - I had the amazing pleasure this weekend of meeting a chipper and zippy 96 year old woman who had worked for my grandfather as his secretary for 27 years, and three years for my great-grandfather before that. She still lives in her own home and gets about, albeit shakily, with only a cane for support. Should we all be so very, extraordinarily fortunate.

You and your family have my deepest sympathies, this is never, ever easy or less than very painful.

Nell

*sigh*

[swatkat24.livejournal.com]

Driving back to my folk's house, my mom and I talked about how our society has yet to get a grip on our ability to keep people's bodies alive when no person seeing how my grandmother and the others up in her locked, third floor 'memory impaired neighboorhood' live wants to end up there. My mother said that at this point, pneumonia would be a kindness.

I know that feeling quite well. Luckily for us, my grandfather can generally recognise us when we introduced ourselves - he's lost his eyesight. That does not make his condition any better, though.

Swatkat