Monday, May 15, 2006

Sunday Blues

This is the second Sunday in a row that I'm feeling down on a Sunday night. Perhaps the emotional roller coaster that is "Grey's Anatomy" leaves me spent every Sunday. It's like the entire week descends on me right when I'm getting ready to begin a new one.

I guess I shouldn't beat myself up too much. Today I visited my grandmother who is in a nursing home. She is suffering from dementia...has been for years. It has been slightly difficult for me to process for several reasons. The first one being that it seemed to happen overnight. She had a stroke one holiday season and that was the beginning of the end. Before then she was a vibrant, lively old lady. Traveled often, got herself around the city, even volunteered in a hospital. Now it's a crap shoot on whether she's going to recognize me when I visit her.

As I write this, I realize that her mental deterioration didn't happen overnight...it was gradual, but her first stroke did tip the scales. My dad says that her memory is deteriorating backwards...like a tape being erased from the end to the beginning. That means that she's going to forget my brother, then me, then my cousins, then my dad. Then she'll forget how to do basic bodily functions, including how to eat. It's very sad, but since my grandmother is in the middle of living it, it's just reality...you know?

It's also strange because I was never very close to her. My dad and his side of the family are Jamaican, but I was raised by my American mother. I was "the weird American cousin" to everyone but my dad. I inherited my grandmother's bosom, but that's about it. She didn't approve that I didn't believe in God, that I grew 'locks, stuff like that. One of the advantages of her dementia is that she doesn't remember any of that stuff!

I guess that's part of the reason why I'm blue. Add that to the myriad of other stuff I've put on this blog and that can equal one sad lady...at least for tonight.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

my grandmother suffered from some form of dementia as well. we always said alzheimer's, but it was never diagnosed as such.

she lived with us for 3 or 4 years. that was really tough to watch my mother go through -- her own mother not remembering who she was.