The Trees The Thing

It was December 1998 when I realized that something was not quite right with my grandfather. He seemed clueless and would have mood swings. He could be smiling at nothing and then grabbing my grandmother and yelling at her about an imaginary cat that was outside and hungry. He would tell people to watch out for the puddles of water on the floor. He talked about the huge parties that my grandmother was throwing in the living room, when no such thing had ever occurred. My grandmother was at her wits end and was tired of his constant hallucinations. He was slowly losing it.

By February of 1999 he was in a nursing home. He was still able to walk some and talk. He would recognize people and talk about the birds that would come to the bird feeder outside his window. I really thought the worst was over and now he would get the help he needed to reverse whatever the Alzheimer’s had done to his brain. Then his ability to walk went and he would wheel around the nursing home and put his feet up on a comatose patient in the room across the hall from him. He actually got into a boxing match with another patient. He still was talking, but now the memory was fading more and more. He started to mix people up. I was my dead aunt a few times. Then I was nothing to him anymore.

Soon his language was nothing but a whisper. You would have to lean in to hear him and then try to decipher his mumblings. His hands twisted inwards and he seem to shrink. He stayed in his bed and lost the ability to walk. He would point out the window and jabber about the birds. He would stare for a long time and you felt like he was really trying to remember.

Then the strokes, the pain he could not tell anyone about. His whispers were nothing but small gasps of breath. His hands started to twist and he would grab on to your hand and not let go. His eyes clouded with cataracts and his hair was kept short or shaved off. He shrunk some more.  I would visit him and stare at this man, this man that worked hard and loved being outside and had a life and memories and see something that resembled more of a puddle instead of a person. It is wasn’t for the beeps of the machine he had  to be hooked up to to keep him breathing, I would not have been able to tell the difference.

March 20th, 2010 was the last time I saw my grandfather. I heard the sounds of his room before I saw him. The clicks and whirls of his oxygen machine. I looked at him, smaller then ever, in his bed. His short hair, his wrinkled hands that looked like they were folded in on themselves. I pried one hand apart and held it, I let him squeeze my hand until it hurt. I stood over him and we copied each others eyes. I would squint and he would squint, I would raise my eyebrow, so would he. I leaned over and we touched nose to nose. He whispered. He pointed. He pointed outside to the birds. I told him I understood if he wanted to go, but I was going to be selfish and say no.  I told him that if he would only wait a little bit longer maybe we would cure this. “You will wake up and find that you are a Great-Grandfather. ” He squinted at that.

He could no longer eat solid foods, everything was pureed. He was on pain medication all day everyday. I stayed a little bit longer and then I said bye.

April 5, 2010 he was gone. The staff said they could tell it was time and so family stayed with him in his room from 10 a.m. until 7 p.m.  I sat numb on the couch after the news and felt a sadness I had never before experienced. How does someone cope with losing a grandparent? I didn’t know because I never had. Though he had been gone for many years mentally, it was still a shock to me. It hurt even more because we were not able to converse with him, he was not able to tell us that it was ok and he was ready.There was no comfort, no final words. I equate it with ripping a band-aid off. You know it is coming off, you prepare yourself, but it still hurts and usually more than you thought it would.

One of the questions that kept popping into my head was “If a person is made up of their memories, their thoughts, what does that say for a person with Alzheimer’s?”  What happens when someone is not an infant but has the mental capabilities of  one. I did quite a bit of philosophical pondering, which is probably the one and only time I will use that Philosophy minor. It was my mother that helped me with this dilemma. She said a person can have this terrible disease and forget everything about themselves but as long as family and friends remember, then that person never really dies. The stories live on, long after the person.

I was about 6 or 7 when I was outside at my grandparents house. My grandfather kept rabbits in this huge wire cage. He noticed I was interested in them and said “You have to be quiet. You can’t be too loud or you can scare them and they will die.” He didn’t say it in a mean way, just a way of educating a child. I ran a short distance from the cage and then ran back towards the cage screaming and shaking my hands in front of me. I must have looked like a moron. My grandfather turned around and I stopped in my tracks, inches from the cage. I waited for him to become a monster, but instead he laughed. He laughed so hard he could hardly speak. When he stopped he said “You are stubborn aren’t you? Just like your granny. Don’t ever do that again.” He turned around shaking his head and chuckling to himself.

Last week I was out walking when I saw a huge brown bunny, like the type my grandfather kept. I stopped and the bunny stopped. It just sat there for the longest time, twitching it’s nose and staring me down. I was happy for the memory and the other memories that came flooding back and realized that even though the person in those memories is no longer here, those stories are still here. They will always be here, I’m too stubborn to let them go.