Naleighna Kai's Literary Cafe Magazine November Edition | Page 37

My seventy-nine year old grandmother has a routine
that is as close to clockwork as the minute and second
hands work on a clock itself. Up by seven, she cleans and
feeds herself without help or a struggle. She combs her
almost waist-length silver hair and plaits it all by herself.
She prepares her favorite meal of bologna and onions a
few times a day, cutting her onion with a sharp paring
knife without assistance. She takes great pride in washing
the dishes for the family (Thank God because it’s not my
favorite thing to do). We have a great time talking about
whatever is on the television and her snappy remarks
about the people who she feels need to fix their ugly faces
keep me tickled. But …
She doesn’t know who I am or who my kids are. She
doesn’t recognize my sister, her namesake, or her children.
She doesn’t remember ever knowing her grandchildren or
great grandchildren. We’re just nice people, who accor-
ding to her, should be getting paid to watch her since her
daughter wants to gallivant around the city all willy-nilly.
We’ve become used to reintroducing ourselves. Well, at
least I have. She feels shame when I tell her that we’re all
kinfolk and we’re here to take care of her. She can’t stand
that she can’t remember us and calls herself a “dumb ass”.
It’s always too funny to me that she cusses, but I assure her
that she is far from being an ass or dumb.
She attributes her lack of memory to being “as old as
the hills”, a consequence of not dying when she still had
her faculties fully intact. She longs to go back to “good ol’
Nashville, Tennessee”, back to the fa mily that she knows,
the family that has long since passed away. Sometimes
her sleep patterns are “off ”; her normal bedtime is around
ten o’clock in the evening, but there are days, especially
around the fourteenth of the month, where she paces the
floor until three in the morning, worried, awaiting her
daughter’s return. The only thing more frustrating than
staying up all night when I’m already exhausted is the look
of heartbreak when I look into her warm, gray eyes and
tell her that her daughter won’t be coming home. These are
the times I cry. I’m so glad that it doesn’t happen everyday.
Many of the people that I know who are caring
for a loved one with memory loss are struggling to
understand the disconnect between the person that
they once knew and the person that now inhabits
their lives. The person they love looks every bit like
the person they have always known, but spending
just a moment in their presence becomes a stark re-
minder that he or she no longer exists as the one they
knew. Somehow in the stretch of time, that person
slipped away, unaware even to themselves, that it was
happening. And even with all of modern science’s
advances, there is no way to stop the journey that this
path takes. Even in the times it seems when the per-
son you recognize “returns”, the moment is fleeting.
One simply has to learn to appreciate the moment for
what it was; a beautiful mind reaching back for the
traces of its former existence.
So, I choose to focus on the rainbow in an overcast
sky. My grandmother feeds me ear loads of compli-
ments about how beautiful she thinks I am, how she
likes my style, and to only let a man “have his way”
with me if he has enough money to support me. The
look of pure joy on her face at a sunshiny day makes
my whole world smile. I tell her she is beautiful every
chance I get (even though she doesn’t believe me);
and how happy my heart is that I get to hang out with
her (she still says I need to get paid for dealing with
a kook like her… LOL). I sit quietly while she talks
to herself about what she does remember about her
childhood and thank God that I have the opportu-
nity to love on her the way I know she’s never been
loved on before.
I’m not looking forward to the day that the good
Lord calls my grandmother home, though I know
with each passing day she’s closer to the dream of
meeting her mother again. I’m selfish that way. The-
re’s not one day that I regret having this time with
her. Even if given the all the money in the world,
I still wouldn’t trade it in. Not for anything in this
world.
#ILoveMyGrandma
MarZé Scott, a lifelong resident of Ypsilanti, Michigan, is a lover of all things creative. While taking
care of her family, she indulges Her passions of reading, writing, drawing, and makeup artistry. She
has been writing short stories and poems since elementary school and developed a taste for writing
about provocative topics like the consequences of casual sex in high school. Her debut novel, Gemini
Rising is due for release 2018.
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