my gram

 This week I'm itinerating, visiting friends and family on a brief trip to the US. One day, I drove from my sister's house outside of Kalamazoo to my aunt and uncle's house outside of Syracuse, and I stopped outside of Buffalo along the way to see my grandmother. 

Gram will be 99 this September. She's living in an assisted living community, and her world keeps contracting. Since a fall in 2016, she's been losing hearing and vision, so she cannot do the knitting and crochet that used to occupy her hands. She can't read the paper every day or listen to the news that used to keep her mind busy. Hearing and sight are reciprocal senses. Usually as a person loses one, they use the other to compensate. For my grandmother, losing both at the same time is a particular hell. 

She has hearing aids, but she--of course--refuses to wear them because she says they create an echo. My Uncle Pete has adopted a decibel level that makes me want to reach for earplugs when he talks to her. I've noticed that a lot of what she does hear, or pretends to hear, is actually guessing from context. She hears some of the words, and fills in the others. I imagine that this process must be exhausting for her--listening intently and trying to fill in the blanks. I've found myself limiting what I try to tell her because she cannot guess what she doesn't expect, and when she realizes communication has failed, she gets frustrated. 

On this visit, I hadn't told her I was coming. (I also didn't tell my uncle; hopefully he believes her when she tells him I came by.) When I walked into her apartment, she was asleep on the sofa with the classical radio station playing baroque music loudly enough to wake the dead and to be heard by the nearly deaf. She woke easily when I called to her because her sleep these days is rarely deep.

me: Hello!

her: Hello! Who are you?

me: It's Kate.

her: Who?

me: KATE! Your granddaughter

I think that I am prepared for the moment when she one day will not remember me, but every time we have this exchange, my heart is in my throat. Thankfully, this is not that day. 

her: Oh! Kate! They let you in? We're under quarantine!

She tells me how someone has a "bad cold" so everyone has to stay in their rooms for five days. This is day one and she's bored and mad about it. There is a flier on the table explaining that a small number of staff and residents have tested positive for COVID, so to curb spread meals will be brought to each individual apartment. I know that the pandemic has been explained to her. She had COVID herself last year. But her guess-based hearing means the complexity of the situation is beyond her reach. 

her: It's like--do you remember a couple of years ago, the almost national shutdowns because someone had an earache? It's like that. We used to be able to go out and play pinochle and do puzzles, but not now! I can't go out with you. 

me: That's okay. I can just stay here with you. 

I'm surprised the receptionist didn't say anything to me when I signed in, but I was already wearing a KN-95, so maybe she thought I knew. I would have worn a mask anyway. We should all be wearing masks when we enter the living space of society's most vulnerable people.

She asks if I'm back visiting family, and I say yes, also noting that she remembers I live far away. I tell her that I was with Mom, and now I'm going to Melissa's. 

her: Melissa is far!

me: Just a couple of hours. It's okay. 

her: Peter is closer. You could go there. 

me: Yes, but Melissa is expecting me.

her: You were with your mom. Where's your mom? 

me: Michigan

her: That's far! How are you going to get back there tonight?

me: I was in Michigan. Now I'm going to Melissa's. It not that far.

her: Right. 

We talk about how everyone is--Melissa, my mom, my sister, my kids. 

Then she showed me around the apartment. She does not remember that I helped her move into this apartment a year ago. I join her in her reality, and react as though I am seeing everything for the first time--the bed that Mel and Pete set up, the dresser drawers that Chris and I managed to get back in all the right spaces, the mementos of her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren that I unpacked and set on shelves where she can see and touch them. 

She shows me the mini-fridge and the microwave. She is very proud of the tea towel she has hung in front of the microwave to block the sun from bouncing into her eyes in the afternoon. We sit back down on the sofa, and she picks up her nap blanket. We talk about how I made it for her, the kids and I sitting on the floor tying two pieces of fleece together--a tiger print on the front and plain green on the back. Siberian tigers are her favorite. Just last week, she called me on the phone to tell me how much she appreciates this blanket and that she uses it every single day for her afternoon sofa naps. She tells me all of this again. Does she remember that she called me? I have no idea. I don't mention it. Then, abruptly, 

her: If you're ready to go, I can walk you out.

me: Okay

I'm not ready, but she is clearly done with the effort of being visited.

me: I thought you're supposed to stay in your room. I can walk out myself.

her: They can yell at me. I'll walk you out. 

me: Okay! Let's put on this mask you have on your walker. 

She puts in on upsidedown and inside out. I rearrange it, gently pressing the wire around her nose, and telling her the blue side goes out. 

her: Oh! Isn't that clever! Nobody ever told me.

I wonder if that's true.

As we walk down the hall, I notice that she's slowed down. She used to be a speed demon with that walker, zipping past mere mortals, but now she's just the speed of a regular able-bodied human. 

her: You're home visiting family. Where do you live now?

me: Europe. 

her: Where?

me: I live far away. In Europe. 

I think trying to tell her about Armenia will lead us down a frustrating path. She won't hear it clearly and won't be able to guess. This is easier and not completely untrue.

her: Right! You moved to Russia and fell in love, and you stayed.

me: Yeah

I don't disagree with her. This is close enough to the truth. I am glad, though, that she's not watching the news these days, so she isn't hearing about the current geopolitical situation, so she's not worrying about me being in Russia. 

When we get to the lobby, she tells me that I have to sign out in the book. As I'm doing that, she tells the receptionist, "That's my granddaughter!" 

I lean down to hug her over the walker. I've been taller than she is for thirty years, but now she's shrinking, and I notice how far down she is, and how slight. 

me: I love you!

her: I love you, too. 

I walk out into the portico and pause while the inevitable tears prick my eyes. Every visit, every phone call might be the last, and I am hyperaware that my choices have made visits and phone calls very difficult. I am so glad that I got to see her face and hear her voice and hug her this week. But I'm so sorry that I can't share more of my life with her. Ten years ago, she would have loved to see pictures and hear about the new places I'm visiting, about the things I've been knitting. My grandmother has always been a curious person who enjoyed learning about the world, but a life based on limited sensory input and guessing makes learning about new and unexpected things so difficult and frustrating that it becomes impossible. 

her: When I go on to greener pastures, you can have this tiger blanket back. 

When she goes on to greener pastures, I will be a mess. I am already a mess over how little there is of her now. Old age is not for the faint of heart.

I didn't get a picture this time, but here we are in 2019.