My 90 Year Old Grandma

My grandmother is in the hospital. I have been told it isn’t serious but come on now, at ninety years old just about anything can become serious. She apparently mixed up her medications and had some kind of reaction. She is ninety and lives alone. Your first thought is probably how lucky she is still able to live on her own at that age. That was my thought on her birthday two months ago. Today I think about why it is not good she lives alone. This medication mishap is tops right now.

She was deemed legally blind this last year. She lives on the side of a friggen mountain, with somewhere in the neighbourhood of one hundred stairs between her door and the road. She has no help from home care or a meals on wheels type of thing. Why doesn’t she? Because she is old and stubborn and set in her ways.

My aunts and uncle, even my dad, have all asked her over the years to sell the house and go live with one of them. No, she can’t do that. I understand where she’s coming from. She has lived in that house for over sixty years. Three of her five children were born in that house, not just while they lived there, but actually in the house. My grandfather, the one and only love of her life, died in that house. After more than sixty years she knows every inch of that house and can get around it easily, sight or no sight.

Honestly, her home is the best place for her but she should allow her family to bring in help. Her family, my family, should just do it anyway. Why haven’t they yet? Because she has fought them on it, she’s a stubborn old lady remember, and they let her win. Where has this letting her win got her? In the hospital.

It can be difficult to deal with aging parents. We love them and want to take care of them but we don’t want to take away the things in life that give them joy, that allow them their own independence. No matter what we want for them, what we feel is right, forcing someone to so something they don’t want to do can often do more harm than good.

I don’t know. I worry about her. I do hope she comes out of this troublesome episode quickly, and I hope my family does something to help her, to allow her to continue to live on her own rather than force her to do what she doesn’t want.

I worry about my own aging parents too. Stubbornness appears to run rampant in both families. I wish I wasn’t so far away from all of them.

The rain outside, which I usually find very soothing, just seems to amplify my brooding mood this morning. I must go wake up my child and get a dose of laughter and smiles in before we have to head out and start our day.