This was something that happened yesterday. I wanted to document it because I thought it was super cute. And very observant.
Between Mr. M and myself, we have 1 grandparent left. She is a sweet little 97 year old woman. And quite proud of her age and who she is. We live about a 10 minute drive from her. I will refer to her as GGM for this story.
Last year, GGM fell in the middle of the night and broke her shoulder. At that age, there is not much they can do for them other than keep them still so the bones hopefully heal. She spent 6 weeks in the hospital as she healed and we would often go to the hospital to visit her and see how she was doing. It became apparent to us at that time that she has some kind of memory loss. I don't know if she has an official diagnosis but the memory loss is there.
We will go to visit her and about 1 out of 10 times she will know who we are. Usually the conversation goes like this
Hi GGM
Hi
How are you doing?
I am good but who are you?
I am Jocelyn, Mr. M's wife.
Who is Mr. M?
Mr. M is N's son.
N (mr. m's dad) has a son! When did he have a son? Did he get married? I am going to talk to him! He is in trouble. He got married and didn't tell me!
Because of this happening, we have talked to our children about her memory loss, mostly so that they don't wonder what is going on and are not wondering what it is about.
I have wanted to visit GGM for 7 weeks now but I have had a cough. A nasty one. And since she lives in an old folks home, we cannot go and see her. Yesterday the kids asked again if they could go. We were driving in the van and I said we could not go but I am sure she understood.
L, being the funny little man that he is, goes to me, "Mom, understand that we are not there? GGM does not even know who we are! How do you expect her to understand why we are not there when she does not even know who dad is and that Poppa N has a son! She does not even know that Poppa got married so really mom, understand, understand when she does not even know who we are?"
It was funny and we all laughed about it. He is right. I remember going to see her after we realized that she has memory loss and sitting there realizing that the visits are really not for her, they are more for my kids to make memories with her. I am sure she enjoys her visits with us. I really feel that it is very important to go and visit with her, take a few minutes (it's a lot for her with the kids) to just stop by and see her and let her know that she is important to us. Because she is.
1 comment:
When Hazel got really sick and we all thought she would die, and even for a while after, I didn't take my boys anymore. Pretty soon she started asking where they were. How was I to tell her that I didn't want them to be scared of her? She tells stories of dead people visiting her, she looks like she is slowly starving to death and she is a bit loopy.
Pretty soon I realized THEY needed to see her just as much as she needed to see them. We go and visit, the boys and I have great talks after. This has been a wonderful opportunity to talk about things like the veil being REALLY thin as you get closer to dying. Something we probably wouldn't have talked about without these experiences.
I watch some of the young people today and I wish that they all could have the experiences that my kids (and yours) do, because I honestly think we are building better kids for it.
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