Phase of life? About loss of grandparents

It’s 2:26am, and I’m awake, thinking of something my mother said earlier.  We were discussing the eventuality of her mother’s death, and she said, "If Mama dies at 2 in the morning, you’ll know within the hour." 

I know it sounds morbid.  I know it’s not something people usually discuss.  I guess I’m going through a phase of my life where I am focusing on EVERYONE’S mortality, not just my own.  As I approach my 35th birthday, my grandmothers have just passed their 88th birthdays, and I am scared.

Why am I scared?  Again, I know it is morbid, but I can’t seem to help myself.  With having already lost my father (20 years ago) and both my grandfathers, I am, perhaps, more focused on death than your average person.  I have only known one lady well in my life who lived longer than my grandmothers already have lived.  Mrs. Thorpe was 99 when she died.  She was a sweet lady, born in 1886.

Each day, I get so afraid I’ll have a telephone call that my precious Memaw has died.  It’s become something of an obsession with me, and I don’t know what to do about it.  I visit her once every week, which isn’t really enough, and I feel guilty for not visiting more often.  

My other grandmother, the troublesome Nanny…I’m even scared for her.  I worry that she will fall and break a bone (or more than one), because she insists on doing everything for herself, and her gait has become so uneven now.  She wobbles out to her mailbox or her trash can, and I can’t bear to watch her as she steps back up on the curb, after throwing something away.  She keeps her trash can at the edge of the road.  I’ve tried convincing her to let someone (I’ve even volunteered myself) help her out more, but she insists she doesn’t need the help.  While the thought is admirable, the reality is that she really should at least use a walker or a cane, but will she?  No.  

It’s strange.  I fear for Memaw’s ending, but I only fear for injury for Nanny.  It feels pretty much like Nanny’s always going to be here.  If she’s lived through what she’s lived through already, then why not just keep on living?  Of course, by that logic, what about Memaw?  She’s been through equally as much as Nanny has, just different circumstances.  Each of them, for example, lost a grown child, which nearly killed both of them, but they survived it.

Anyone who’s ever read me much knows I have a very love-hate relationship with Nanny.  People often ask me how  I can be so bitter about a little old lady.  That’s so hard to answer, but they just don’t know the history we’ve shared.  It’s very very ugly.  But I do love her, and I know she loves me.  

Senility and Alzheimer’s have set in for Nanny and Memaw, respectively.  It’s really tough coping with both.  It’s actually easier to cope with Memaw’s decline, for some reason.  She hardly remembers anything about her life, yet she handles herself with such dignity.  I don’t know how to explain it.  Thankfully, she hasn’t reached the severe stages of the disease yet, and I hope she never does.  To see her bedridden, not able to speak or move would tear us all apart.  That’s what happened to my Grandpa, Nanny’s husband.  Papaw, Memaw’s husband, needs an entry all to himself.  He was just….out there.

Nanny has literally lost her mind.  Today, for example, she was telling me about this little child bringing her soup.  She said the little child, which she thought was a girl, made the soup herself.  Then HE (that’s what Nanny said) told her that he and his mother had had a fight a while back and lived on separate sides of town.  She heavily implied that this child lived alone.  She switched back to saying "she" and said that she was going to try to make peace with her mother.  The soup….well, it was better than some Nanny’s mother used to make, and Nanny marveled that a young child could make anything so good.  Also today, she told Mama and me that the mayor had come by and looked at her car and told her not to get it fixed….the "fireware" would have to fix it, since they ran into her.  Then, she said that Mary Helen had arranged for Nanny to receive Social Security from Germany.  There’s a back story there.  Nanny has ALWAYS received Social Security from Germany, until last January.  They send her a form every year, requiring a signature to prove that she is still alive, gruesome as that sounds.  She didn’t send it in last year, so they cut her off.  She never knew the difference!  She asked Mama to find that form, after Mama explained that to her.  Mama told her, "We just did that last week, Nanny.  I took it and mailed it in."  Then Nanny shifted back to Mary Helen and how great she was to have thought about Nanny being able to draw Social Security from all the time she worked in Germany, which she said wasn’t all that much.  Now that contrasted what she always told me, when she was in sound mind.  She always said she worked her ass off in Germany to take care of my Daddy when he was growing up.  So next, Nanny says, "Sue, find that form for me and I sign it."  Not even three minutes had passed since Mama told her she had just sent it in.

Because of old resentments, I have a hard time dealing with Nanny.  I wish it weren’t so, because she needs me now, and I just don’t feel like being there the way I should.  I feel like a really BAD grandson, and I won’t blame you if you note this entry and say I AM bad.

Mama gets afraid sometimes.  She asks me, "If I wind up like Nanny, are you going to ignore me the way you do her?"  There’s an obvious answer there, but I guess it’s only obvious to me.  No,  I won’t.  I haven’t had 20 years of Mama making my life miserable, then blaming everyone else for everything that she did.  I’m on GOOD terms with my mother.  I never was on good terms with Nanny….not since Daddy died in 1989.  

Had Daddy lived, everything would be so different.  Boy, would it.

But that’s just not the way it is.

Thank you for reading this, if you did.

Jack