My grandma died in the beginning of August. She had a perfectly peaceful fade out. It did not come on too fast or last too long. We were very lucky. During her final two years, I got to see her nearly everyday, and I feel really blessed to have been able to experience her dying process. At times it was incredibly difficult. For a year of that time she was living with me and my aunt and uncle. Her Alzheimer’s disease was always on a steady march. There were times when little victories of cognition were won. When she got new hearing aids and could engage with more than just a deep male voice or a booming radio. And when acupuncture restored some of her vision and she was able to read again, if only in Super Large Print.
But for the most part she was always slowly slipping away. The early part of this process was the hardest for her. I’d ask her what she was doing. “I’m brooding.” I did my best to keep her distracted and not dwelling in the past, but it wasn’t easy. She was very physically limited, she didn’t like tv, she loved the radio but there were few engaging activities for her. What activities are there for someone with Alzheimer’s who is also blind with bad balance and a painful back and hip? Brooding over her remaining memories was the most engaging activity for her. Polishing them as she’d done for years, with regret, shame, and guilt. I tried to convince her to look at things differently, to realize she hadn’t “burned all her bridges,” but she had too much practice relating to her past negatively to stop now.
But slowly there was a beautiful change. She started to forget her patterns. She’d forget to brood. She always had a magnificent sense of humor and this came out more and more with a lightness about things. She wasn’t always happy. But now her unhappiness was like a zen master who just crapped her pants and isn’t happy about it. It was a pure response to the moment at hand. The frustrations of the present absorbed her as evenly as the joys of the present. She could sit outside and smile at the breeze and the birds, deeply contented by the simple pulse of life.
There were times when it was agony to watch her diminishing. She had burned very bright for a long time. And now it felt like she kept being cut in half. Like Zeno’s paradox: the arrow can never reach the target because first it must go halfway to the target, and halfway to the halfway point, and halfway before that, again and again, splitting time until it doesn’t exist. Just when I thought she couldn’t be diminished more and still be her, she’d be cut in half again. Again and again, until she was such a slim fraction of who she was. But always still her. And sometimes more herself than maybe she’d ever been before. So much of how she defined herself, how people saw her, was actually just surface stuff. At the end, every last piece of character had fallen away from her. There was just the breath. No memories, or plans, or surface identity to separate her from the moment. Just breath and being. And finally not even breath. But maybe still being.
I am so grateful to have been able to share this time with her. She was an amazing woman who lived a long and complex life. I wouldn’t be here if not for her. I miss her a lot, but in many ways, what I miss has been gone for awhile. But whenever I connect to the moment, simply breath and be, then I feel she’s still here with me.
I’ll try to share some of her humor later, as well as explain how she helped shaped Super Large Print books.
Thanks for reading.
