Flood of sadness

First and foremost, let me state clearly here at the start that this covers a depressing subject matter.  If you're interested in smelling roses and giggling like a school girl, this may not be the blog post for you.  On another day, or another week perhaps you'd be in the right spot.  Not these past few days though...

My grandmother is 85 years old.  Her husband died several years ago of cancer (though her first, she'll remind you, was taken from her in the war), and she's been a lonely woman since.  This is my mom's mother.  She writes (published) poetry, and has a small social circle of friends that visit to read their poems or to go out to eat.  She's even gone to read her poetry at social events held by local book retailers.

However, the only life she has outside of her poetry circle is dependant on my family.  For reasons that I am far to tired to delve into, my mother has stopped speaking to her mother for the past few years.  Since she lives independently, she still needs help (trash days, changing light bulbs, going to the store, etc.) so my step-father does everything he can for her.  Granny has talked about moving into a smaller house for years, as she doesn't need all the space that her current 3 bedroom, 2 bath provides.  But, years have taken their toll.  A little over a week ago she had a heart attack and hit her head when she fell.  The injury needed 4 stitches to be sewn up, and she was hospitalized for tests.  Two days later, she was released from the hospital due to the fact that she had been refusing to take tests, give blood, etc.  She even accused some of the nurses of trying to kill her.  She's a stubborn old woman, and she has no desire to have others tell her how to live her life.

She's back at home.  She's refusing to take her medication.  Her doctors and social workers have told her that if she does not take her medicine that she will die.  She's expected to last 2 weeks after cutting out the medication.  That time frame will expire at the end of this week.  Completely coherant on phone calls and in conversations with doctors, it would be tough to get my parents' their power of attorney.  No judge would say that she isn't in a sound mind.

And so I sit, half a country away, knowing that the woman who took care of me daily after school for several years will not be alive next week.  There's a slim chance that the doctors could have underestimated her (her stubbornness alone could get her another month, if you ask me), but regardless of how long it takes, it's just helpless waiting now.  I've told her that she needs to take her medicine, but I don't have the heart to tell her she'll die.  Everyone else has done that for her, so it's her call.  She's barely eating, not drinking enogh liquids... So when will she go?

Closer to home, my wife's grandmother has dementia that seems to get worse by the day.  The day after I found out about my granny's heart attack, Zan (my wife) found out that her grandmother was found sitting at the dining table just babbling incoherant words around 4 pm.  She had been sitting at the table with her breakfast bowl since she had sat down to eat some hours earlier.  In the kitchen, the sink ran at full throttle.  Fortunately, there was nothing blocking the drain, so there was no potential for flood damage.  She was rushed to the hospital, as we feared that she had suffered a stroke.

Zan's grandfather is sick with a cold and is too tired to take care of his wife.  There's a struggle in the family to put them in a retirement center, or an adult care facility.  But for now, Zan's mom has been taking care of them, as well as maintaining her full time job.  The stroke didn't actually happen.  It was just her dementia.  They took her out to eat the next day and they had to remind her how to use utinsils and how to put dressing on a salad.  Daily things that don't even give us pause today may some day be thing that makes us break down and cry.

I've had a life fairly sheltered from death.  I've lost two grandparents when i was younger, and a friend of mine from high school was in a drunk driving accident and killed a year or so after graduation.  Pets have not come home again.  That's really the limit of my exposure to death. I now live in the bible belt, but was raised without religion.  It's hard to say what I believe in when I haven't had to deal with the topic yet.

Just wish timing could be a bit better so that my wife and I wcould be stronger for each other.

AG