Living with a dying grandmother

It's surprising that I could have spent so much time with my grandmother and yet not really have known her. While growing up, I visited my grandparents frequently, and occasionally stayed with them on my own. My grandmother was always content to let my outgoing grandfather run the show and take the major role in our interactions. I know that my grandmother loved me, though, because she always made sure I was comfortable and well fed. Whenever we were with her on a trip, she made sure that meals were planned and restaurants picked far in advance. Food was never left to chance. To a hungry teenager, that was important.

After my grandfather passed away, my grandmother came to Utah. She was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's Disease. After a long respiratory illness, she came to live with us. We thought that she might die in the next month or so. Instead, she seemed to rebound, and for the next four months became an important part of our family.

Some moments stand out:

• Christmas lights on Temple Square: Grandma trudged through the cold air using her walker and grinned like a young child at the beautiful lights. She also loved the apple pies we got at McDonald's afterwards.
  
• Sourdough pizza Mondays: Grandma loved to help make meals. We loved it when she put the pepperoni on the pizza because she always piled it on. She loved to eat the pizza, too, and almost always ate four or five pieces.
• Running errands: Driving with Grandma always made me see things anew. She grew to love the mountains, and every time she saw the snow covered peaks while driving with me in the car, she would gasp and exclaim how beautiful the world was. It warmed my heart each time, helping to ease the pain of seeing her health and memory decline.
• Gentle conversations: Grandma taught me the joy of talking about the things that are present and close by. We would talk about the warmth of the sun on our backs as we walked, the flowers that poked through the snow, the strange ice formations made by the slanted winter sun in the snow piles by the walks and drives, the warmth and softness of the Floppy's fur.
  
• Eating out: Grandma's favorite activity was going out to eat. She loved buffets. She could really put the food away for a tiny 85 year old woman.
• Ice cream: Grandma's favorite food was ice cream. The easiest and surest way for us to show love for her was to buy her ice cream. She loved ice cream her whole life, and by the time she came to live with us, she no longer had to restrict her intake of her favorite food. But she didn't like eating ice cream alone. I gained at least a couple of pounds while she was here just from all the ice cream we ate together.
  
• A new side to Little J: Grandma had a special relationship with Little J. She would let Little J help her and tell her things that she would not accept from anyone else. Little J spent hours helping Grandma eat breakfast, move around the house, and find interest in day-to-day life.
  
• Floppy's friend: No matter how bad things were for Grandma, she would not forget Floppy. She regularly checked to see that he had food and water. She let him out several times during the day. She would bend over, risking personal harm, to fill the food dish or clean the water dish. She never complained when he climbed on top of her. They spent hundreds of hours being couch and bed buddies. And when her memory was especially bad, she would follow him around the house, always trusting him to lead her to where she needed to go.
  

Taking care of Grandma brought feelings of joy that frequently warmed and filled me completely. I connected with her at times on a level that felt like old friends, a relationship that seemed to stretch beyond the present to both the far past and distant future, as if this were but a moment among many pleasant moments we had known and would know together. Although her illness had changed her personality a lot by the time she moved in with us, I'm grateful that I got to know her in at least one phase of her life. All the scary and hard times we experienced taking care of her made those good moments even more precious. Toward the end they seemed like fragile, almost illusory gifts that we dared not inspect carefully for fear that they would transform into her bouts of rage, frustration, impotence and fear.

Along with joy came sadness. Watching my grandmother's health and mental state deteriorate before my eyes crushed my understanding of human life. I began asking the questions to which I thought I already had answers. I struggled to see the beauty in the snow-covered mountains because I couldn't see past the devastation in front of me. I questioned the reality and promise of the good moments. They seemed unreal compared to the darkness of pain, anger, and fear.

When I heard that my grandmother passed away last Tuesday, I did not cry. How could I grieve death when life contained only horrors for her? I hope for her that death comes as a release from living hell. I hope that she and Grandpa are together. I hope that they both know how much I love them. And one day, maybe soon, maybe in ages, I'll sit with her again and we'll continue our conversations of the present and close by. We'll feel inside, once again, that connection that transcends the bounds of mortal life, and we'll rejoice.