Rough waters for me and my family of late. Seeing someone
you love walk closer to death is never an easy journey. Especially when that
journey is composed of tiny steps closer to death’s door. Physical ailments
pile on. Doctor’s visits accumulate on the calendar. ER doctors, Cardiologists,
Neurologists, Orthopedics, the family physician. Chest pain, nausea, a fall. Repeated
and repeated.
Seeing a loved one downsize into a smaller home, sell most
of their possessions. Settle into a foreign life with new neighbors and a
different routine. Bury their spouse— the other half of the set. Vision issues,
memory loss, the gentle and quiet become combative and hateful. It isn’t them
of course, only their disease which is taking over their mind and body, but not
their soul.
I still look at her at times and catch a glimpse of the
person I knew as a child. But then in a flash I look into her dark brown eyes
and realize she’s gone, or rather leaving, in transition, in flux. The person I
speak of is my grandma that came to every ball game she could when I was a
child. Her presence in the stands alongside
my mother bolstered my confidence before every national anthem of basketball
and volleyball games in middle school and high school and even college. She is beginning her
departure from cognitive reality. Slipping further from our grasp.
