(no subject)
Mar. 27th, 2005 05:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
x_losMy Grandmother Lenore's been formally diagnosed with Alzheimer's. I found out today. Recently she's been a bit wacky, including the Foodless Christmas Dinner of Wonders. But somehow that didn't translate in my mind into anything more than typical Lenore- she's a bit spacey, rather blonde. She's Kim's mother, but she's been a good grandmother to me since I was very young. She's a good woman. She was trying very hard to stay involved, active. I didn't expect this to happen to her.
I went out to visit my grandfather today and it became immediately apparent that he's also slipping into some murky blackness. He was always (despite being politically insane, creepily misogynistic, anti-Semitic, racist and all the rest) canny and sharp, unforgiving and tough, but he cried on the phone to my mother that he wanted to see me and then didn't remember doing it, called me the wrong name twice, generally couldn't follow the conversation and made random, really inappropriate remarks. Stared into my face and called me my mother's name, Susan, called me his sister's name, Cosette.
The remarks were not merely his typical political inappropriateness, but things that showed he'd lost the thread of what was socially acceptable and what wasn't. Not just the gracelessness of age, but real-- as if something had been hollowed out of him, leaving words to rattle around inside like marbles in one of the oak bowls he used to turn.
I may not be able to love my grandfather like I wish I could because he's done some truly awful things in his life. But that doesn't mean I don't love him. This came so out of no where. He was perfectly fine at Christmas break, and now he's... I don't think I'm exaggerating or being hysterical when I say he's changed, deeply and suddenly and frighteningly. He’s not completely off; he remembered that I’d been taking Chinese (I told him on break). It’s not like he’s gone. But he’s already pretty bad, and things only get worse from here.
God. I just want to be held right now. I'm accepting it and dealing with it, and its genetic implications for me. But dealing with it maturely doesn't mean I'm not shaken. I feel like I've lost two grandparents in one day.
I went out to visit my grandfather today and it became immediately apparent that he's also slipping into some murky blackness. He was always (despite being politically insane, creepily misogynistic, anti-Semitic, racist and all the rest) canny and sharp, unforgiving and tough, but he cried on the phone to my mother that he wanted to see me and then didn't remember doing it, called me the wrong name twice, generally couldn't follow the conversation and made random, really inappropriate remarks. Stared into my face and called me my mother's name, Susan, called me his sister's name, Cosette.
The remarks were not merely his typical political inappropriateness, but things that showed he'd lost the thread of what was socially acceptable and what wasn't. Not just the gracelessness of age, but real-- as if something had been hollowed out of him, leaving words to rattle around inside like marbles in one of the oak bowls he used to turn.
I may not be able to love my grandfather like I wish I could because he's done some truly awful things in his life. But that doesn't mean I don't love him. This came so out of no where. He was perfectly fine at Christmas break, and now he's... I don't think I'm exaggerating or being hysterical when I say he's changed, deeply and suddenly and frighteningly. He’s not completely off; he remembered that I’d been taking Chinese (I told him on break). It’s not like he’s gone. But he’s already pretty bad, and things only get worse from here.
God. I just want to be held right now. I'm accepting it and dealing with it, and its genetic implications for me. But dealing with it maturely doesn't mean I'm not shaken. I feel like I've lost two grandparents in one day.
