B.
do you know who i am?
do you know where you are?
do you know who that is?
DOYOU REMEMBER?
i have a mee maw, and she has dementia.
she asks me all the time when i’m going back to school, and gets so excited when i tell her for the 100th time that i graduated, that i live here now. we go to visit her and she asks us to take her home, and we have to tell her “you live here now, mee maw.” we’re never sure which home she’s talking about - our house, the home where she raised her children, the first house she moved into after marrying. i think she forgets that she can’t move around without a walker, and often tries to get up to clean up the table or pick something off the ground, and we all have to talk her into sitting back down and letting us do it for her. her face lights up whenever i see her, and i think it’s mostly because she loves me but also because she can’t remember the last time she saw me, even if it was only the day before.
she is still elegant.
she still has pearls in her ears and a brooch on her sweater and a cross around her neck.
still gets her hair permed every two weeks, and even though she began not knowing where all her jewelry was disappearing to,
 
i still tell her she looks beautiful, and we all carry tubes of her lipstick in our pockets so she can reapply whenever she wants to.
she said that the happiest time of her life was when her husband was alive, she had five children living under her roof, and she was cooking and cleaning for them all and showering them with her strict and tender southern version of unconditional love.
i wonder if she can even remember the happiest time of her life. the way she is now, i wonder if she can remember being happy.
my mother asked the doctor about taki ng her off her meds, which are the only things keeping her alive
and everyone in the room looked at her as though she were suggestin g murder and not m ercy.
i am scared. there are signs: the moments when i can’t remember a word, a name, something i know i know. the small pit in my stomach grows just a little bit and i think to my future - to a time of fog, and not being able to remember the life i haven’t yet lived.
what has become of her?
what will become of me?
I AMOKING LO MY INTO OWN FUTURE?
given the life she led,
is that necessarily a bad thing?
she has lived 90 years on this planet, and has been saying that she is ready to leave, whenever god takes her, for at least the last 15. i wonder if she still remembers to pray every night - maybe now it is not memory, but a force of habit.
 
she is the only grandparent i have ever had. she is one of the loves of my life. seeing her as she is fills me with tenderness and rage and sadness and comfort. and pity sometimes, but i try to push that feeling away. she forgets who i am but i try to remember all her good parts for her. i just want to let her know with each passing moment that she is so loved.
SEE? THAT’S . U O