My grandma, 91 years old, had a stroke three weeks ago. One moment she was talking with a nursing home aide, and the next moment she collapsed. She was taken to the hospital and spent a couple of weeks there, where I visited her with my dad during Passover. Now she’s back in the nursing home, where my parents and my brother and I visited her on Mother’s Day. She has apparently recovered all she is going to – which is not much.
She’s confined to a bed. The left side of her body is paralyzed, and her head is turned to the right. She can hardly speak, and she can’t smile, but she can nod her head in response to questions and she seems almost completely lucid. We brought her some roses and a Mother’s Day balloon, which she looked at and seemed to appreciate. And when I gave her my hand, she squeezed it – hard.
She’s so lucid that at one point I realized she was trying to say my brother’s girlfriend’s name in order to ask where she was. (She was visiting her family in Canada.) Even debilitated by a stroke, my grandma is curious about everyone. But so much else has changed.
This is a woman who has always loved food, but because she can no longer swallow, she is now denied the pleasure of eating. Instead, she’s hooked up to an intravenous feeding tube. She also likes to read and do crossword puzzles, but she can’t do those things anymore, either. So during our visit, my dad read to her from a mystery novel.
There was a radio playing in the room, which my aunt must have brought over previously. It was playing Mozart’s Symphony No. 40, and the piece lasted through our entire visit. It was in a minor key, appropriately, but its agitated intellectual complexity made the visit more bearable for me.
That evening, my family went out for a Mother’s Day dinner. It was just the four of us – no girlfriend, no boyfriend, just my parents and my brother and I. I can’t remember the last time the four of us spent time together without anyone else. It was lots of fun – it was a Brazilian restaurant where they keep bringing you skewers of meat – and it reminded me of when we used to live overseas, which was a big bonding experience for our family. And yet we weren’t two parents and two kids; we were four adults, having a good time together.
It wasn’t until later that night, back in the city, comfy in bed next to a sleeping Matt, that my emotions about my grandma hit me.
One, I realized that I’m glad my grandpa never had to see my grandma in this condition. He died two and a half years ago at age 94. This would have devastated him.
Two, I thought about coming out to her. I’ve never told her I’m gay, but her death seems closer than it used to, and I sort of want her to know. But how cowardly is it to tell her something when she can’t even respond? I don’t think she’d mind that I’m gay. In fact, she might resent that I waited to tell her until she couldn’t respond. I want her to know that I’m happy and not alone. And yet – I’m still scared.
At any rate, I can’t believe that this woman – my grandma, who is stubborn, smart, overweight, loves food, never forgets a name or face, interjects comments into conversations whenever she wants, selectively hears what she wants to and ignores the rest – has been reduced to this. Lying in a hospital bed, connected to a feeding tube, communicating via nods and hand squeezes.
Tears came into my eyes, and eventually I fell asleep.