Every summer when we're in Massachusetts we make sure to visit my grandma (my mom's mom). She's lived in a nursing home the last several years and she has dementia, so she doesn't really know who the boys and I are anymore, but we know who she is and we love her and we want her to feel loved and that's what matters. She's the only living great-grandmother the boys have so I think it's important for them to visit with her each year so that they'll know and remember her. It's also good to give them a look into what life is like for elderly people.
Even though she's still here, defying her life expectancy given that she smoked most of her life and has age-related health problems, I miss my grandma. I miss her knowing who I am, I miss our conversations, I miss her soft, gentle voice and her laugh, I miss her funny sense of humor, I miss the furnishings and decorations that she had in her always neat and clean apartment when I was growing up. I miss her being her. I wish I could talk to her about some of the exciting family history discoveries we've recently made from one of her family lines, and about the kids, and about Iowa and Cape Cod and our vacations, and just about life. I wish I could ask her questions about her own life. I believe that she'll someday be herself again and that we'll be able to have those conversations and so many others then.
The past few years she's thought Sam is just the cutest little thing. Well, he is!
Mother and daughter.
Three generations, with a fourth generation taking the picture.
My grandma used to like doing arts and crafts and she made some nice porcelain painted things when I was in high-school that I still have. Now she and her nursing home friends color pictures. It's very sweet but it makes me feel a little sad.
It's hard to see people you love grow old and get sick. I know it's a part of life, but it's not a part that I enjoy. It's a little scary to me to think about the possibility of this happening to my mom in a few decades, and then to me a few decades after that.
But if it does happen to me, well, I've always enjoyed coloring. :-)
I'm looking forward to seeing my Grandma again next month!
