Remember when old ones died and new were born.
See, we have had a lot of babies born. A lot. And we have not had a death in the family in a really, really long time. Not in my family, or in Mike's! Mike lost both of his grandfathers when he was in high school. Long before I knew him. And his near family has not had a death since. My grandmother died when I was in grade school, and my great grandmother when I was in high school. Nothing since. My grandparents have had eleven great-grandchildren born in the past eight years. Mike's Baba has had, gosh, fifteen? more? great-grandchildren born. They kept getting older, and kids just kept on coming. I knew the day would come when it would all fall apart. I dreaded it, but I also felt the circle of life had to continue. I felt we were, I don't know, obscuring nature somehow.
Not that long ago, my grandfather was diagnosed as having early signs of dementia. I don't know if anyone actually used the words Alzheimer's Disease. But his confusion progressed. He wasn't exactly confused though. He was just different. His personality changed. He was anxious. He was cantankerous. Became impossible. It took a year or more to develop. A month or two ago, my grandmother became overwhelmed, and truly could not care for him at home. It devastated her to "give up." But if anything, she did it too long. She eroded her own health trying to care for him. And he was thankless. Nasty. And she was nasty right back. It was really unpleasant to watch. When it was decided that enough was enough, they took my grandfather to the emergency room, where his doctor had him admitted. There was no medical reason. But he had to be an inpatient for some amount of time in order to be eligible for placement in a rehab. The doctor's goal was to strengthen him in rehab so that he could be placed in a long-term skilled nursing facility. But he was unmanageable at rehab. He yelled, banged on tables, hollered that everyone was trying to kill him. "I'm dying! I'm dying! Save me!" He would tell family that they shouldn't have come to see him. He would tell them that they were killing him. Then he'd beg them not to leave, because he was dying! Save him! They started restraining him. Not the legal way, with a prescription and wristbands. They screwed a bedside table over his wheelchair so that he couldn't stand up. They parked him in the hallway this way because he couldn't be left alone. He urinated on the rugs. His anxiety was not being pharmaceutically managed, because they try to avoid drugging up the patients. But he was not sleeping. He could not stay there. It was an awful situation. It was decided that he was not medically in need of rehabilitation, as he was stable, could ambulate, and so on. But his behavior was not manageable. So he was taken to a remote hospital, and placed on the psychiatric ward. He was medically assessed there, and was diagnosed with pneumonia. Within a few days, the pneumonia was in both lungs, and they called one morning saying that he was unable to be woken. The family should come right away. He did rouse when my grandmother got there, and a day or two was spent determining his fate. It was decided that he was eligible for inpatient hospice. He was moved again, and 11 days later, passed away. It was October 8, 2010. He was 91 years and 1 month old.
It's okay with me that he passed away. We lost him a while ago, and he was no longer my happy, exuberant grandfather. He was a prisoner in his body.
Now I just have to worry about my grandmother. Her health is worsening. She was told by one of her physicians that she cannot live alone. She can't stay in her house. It isn't safe. All children concurred. She was told to look for an assisted living facility herself, or that one would be chosen for her. "I ain't goin' anywhere!!" she said. Fuck you all, was her real message. So, I have to wonder. How does it all end?
1 comment:
Oh, that's so hard! I worry, too, about the generation above us aging: my grandparents and Paul's are all gone, but his mom died last year and that was kind of startling: death is starting to come for the next batch.
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