Jig Saw Memory

This past weekend, my 4 year old daughter and I went along with my parents to visit my grandmother who lives in a nearby nursing home.  Since we live in a small, rural community, her sister-in-law also lives there and she was celebrating her 95th birthday that day with an open house.  Admittedly, I do not visit my grandmother as often since she stopped knowing me.  For a while, I could see the glimmer of recognition in her eyes when I would explain to her that I was her oldest son’s daughter.  She’d immediately know me once I explained.  Then, I saw that she began to struggle to remember that her children had children and finally, now she has began asking her own children who they are.  I don’t have much of a family resemblance to my dad or that side, so I think she doesn’t even always know I belong to her family.  Still, I enjoy that my kids will get to see her and even have funny stories to tell about how Great-Grandma always asked who they were.  They will have memories of her. 

After Grandpa died, she revealed to her children that they had promised one another that whoever died first, the other would go into assisted living so they wouldn’t be alone since they had retired out of state.  A couple of years after that, she revealed to one of my aunts that she “just said that” for Grandpa’s sake and knowing that he was a very honest man, would keep his word had she passed away first.  After a couple of scary moments with her being in a diabetic coma, a fall, and her being found disoriented, it was clear that she could no longer live alone and she was placed in a nursing home.  Recently, she was moved back to this area to be in a nursing home closer to the “majority” of the kids – there were 10 in their family.  Which means she is just 15 miles away from me, but a million miles away as far as I’m concerned.

I am a very sensitive and caring person, but Grandma has always had a great sense of humor about aging.  A minor procedure on her eye resulted in her being a “One-Eyed Bandit” for a few weeks once, and she’d joke about getting rowdy in the nursing home or raising hell with her walker.  At the party when I asked her about feeling like a celebrity after getting her picture taken so many times, she just laughed and said, “And here I don’t know anything about it!”  

She had told me in what would be our last real conversation almost 7 years ago, that she was frustrated because she knew her mind was beginning to play tricks on her and she knew it was happening to her and could do nothing to stop it.  She told me she was afraid that one of these times she “wouldn’t come back.”  All this has made me realize how precious our memories are, even more so when they are gone. 

As I sat at the table in the crowded room, full of laughter, celebration and chatter, I watched my grandmother sitting next to me.  Looking around the table, almost desperate to just try to remember who any of these people were.  I know she is tired of asking questions.  My daughter was on my lap and had drug out a 100 piece puzzle.  My mother (on one side of me) was busy showing her how to put together the edges to get it started.  My grandmother (on the other side of me) was attempting to do the same as she looked around the table a bit at the unfamiliar faces.  She had grabbed two pieces and was trying to make them work.  They simply wouldn’t, they didn’t belong together and though she knew it, she tried once more and then threw them back into the pile.  All at once, I wondered if we were like those puzzle pieces to her.  Familiar, yet strange.  Somehow we all fit together, but it didn’t quite work in her mind. 

I was glad I made the effort to go see her again, even though she doesn’t know me.  I see that she thought that she should and that is enough.