Don’t Forget Me, Grandma

It’s been kind of hard for me to write lately. Not just because I was finishing up summer break with the kids, but because I’m kind of at a loss sometimes of what to write. Lately, every time I see mom, it seems as though she’s slipping farther and farther away. Her hair and make up continues to get worse and worse (I didn’t think that was possible) and her speech is more and more slurred together. Since she talks about the same 5 subjects over and over, I can usually make sense of what she’s talking about; but for the average Joe listening to her it’s hard to understand what she’s saying.

Last weekend, the kids and I went over to mom’s house. My daughter (9 years old) had gone back into grandma’s computer room to say hi. She came back to me in the living room, a few minutes later, with a somber look on her face. She looked up at me and from behind her purple, wire rimmed glasses I saw a small sadness in her eyes. With her lips slightly turned down, she looked up at me and quietly said,

“Mommy, grandma doesn’t remember me. She thought I was Marty.”

[Marty is a lady from church that we’ve known for almost 30 years…I don’t know if that’s who she was thinking of, since church ladies come over every week to help, or if she just mixed up names.]

“Did you tell her who you were?” I asked, my heart aching for my little girl that her grandma didn’t recognize her.

“Yes, I told her I was Aubrey and then she said ‘you’re Cassandra’s daughter,” Aubrey replied.

I hugged Aubrey tightly and tried to reassure her,

“See, she remembers you. She just got confused for a minute.”

Mom does get confused and after some explanation, she will sometimes remember who people are (particularly our more immediate family). But I think the days are numbered. She seems to un-recognize familiar faces more and more often; now with her own grandkids! In a couple of weeks, I will be taking my niece-daughter away to college in another state. She’s already expressed her concerns that grandma probably won’t remember her by the time she next comes back to visit. :(