The Grandmother

Growing up the only son of a single mother, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents, Bernard and Felice. Bernard was a big Irishman with a taste for whiskey and the ability to stay silent for great periods of time. Felice was a spindly French bird with a loud mouth and a penchant for standing on a chair to bat Bernard across the head when he’d had too much to drink. They loved each other deeply, as far as I can tell, and were married for fifty-some years. Until one morning, while whistling Blackbird over a cup of black coffee and a newspaper, my grandfather dropped dead of a massive heart attack.

I was six so I didn’t really know what the fuck was going on. Hell, I’m twenty-nine and who the hell knows? All I knew at the time was: everyone is sad, grandpa’s gone and not coming back, some shit about heaven that seemed suspicious to me even then, and I was getting hooked up with lots of ice cream. I loved my grandfather, and his death has impacted my life a great deal, but at the time I was, thankfully, easily distracted.

My mother was heartbroken, but sturdy for her mom, brother and sister.

My grandmother, the tiny French woman with a long crooked European nose and a cigarette dangling from the dry corner of her ancient mouth, was broken for good. My mother rented her a small apartment, and that summer I spent my days there with Felice.

We would walk the half mile to the grocery store at lunch time and she would buy me Mad magazine and Jello parfait. When we got back to the apartment, after sandwiches and Jello, we would lie in her big four post bed, she would whisper “Back to back…” and we would lie there with our backs together telling each other tall tales about fumbling heroes until we would both drift off to sleep.

It was the end of that summer that grandma claimed to be visited by her dead husband. She swore it was true. She had awakened in the night to find Bernard at the end of her bed, dimly illuminated from the night-light in the hallway. According to her, he told her that he was happy, in a better place. He told her to move on. He said goodbye.

She believed this, and because she believed this, it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. It brought her a moment’s peace before a tragic storm.

My grandmother’s vision was the first sign that something was very wrong. When she would forget her daughter’s name or call her neighbor asking if they’d seen Bernard, we worried. When she locked herself out of her apartment and got lost in the parking lot of the complex, we took her to the doctor.

The diagnosis was so cliché: Alzheimer’s disease.

But this is where the cliché breaks down. In the movies and on television Alzheimer’s is portrayed as somehow quaint or, at very least, easily managed by wheeling the half-catatonic patient to a nice breezy window to let them fade away peacefully. While this is the case with some patients, many others find losing their mind to be terrifying, a descent into unfathomable madness. My grandmother was one of those people. She was so headstrong in life that when she recognized her mind was slipping, she fought.

Soon after her diagnosis she needed constant care. We found a nursing home and checked her in. The home was scary and, yes, smelled like piss. Drooling, screaming, scared shitless old people clawing at the last ribbons of their unraveled lives. Felice was no exception.

Visiting was hard, and, one by one, the rest of my family stopped going. Soon it was just my mother and I that could handle it. My grandmother was, at this point, only ever screaming in terror, babbling nonsense, or restlessly sleeping. It was simply awful.

On one of our final visits in the following years, something happened that will stay with me until I inevitably stumble in front of a bus someday.

My mother and I walked into my grandma’s room where she was cuffed to the bed with wide leather straps. This eighty-five pound woman, tethered. As we approached her bed her eyes shot open, filled only with fear and confusion. My grandmother was gone. She’d been replaced by this breathing nightmare. It was around this time I made some serious, lifelong decisions about the nature of our place here on Earth. There’s a spot deep in the terrified eyes of a loved one where God is eaten by instinct, where you can nearly see the primordial sludge engulf our pretty little myths.

But somewhere through that nightmare of a million memories exploding in her brain, my grandmother’s eyes locked on mine and she whispered something I couldn’t quite make out.

I leaned closer, keeping my eyes on hers.

“Back to back…”

My grandmother’s voice, fragile as paper, speaking words I hadn’t heard in years, conjuring memories long dormant.

I unbelted the straps that held Felice’s tiny arms, she rolled to her side, and I laid with my back to hers. I managed a short story about a fumbling hero before she fell peacefully asleep.

Grandma died the following week.

I don’t know if any of it means anything. Probably not. All I know is that an old lady came back from the edge of madness to find a moment of peace with her grandson.

If there is a god, he lives in that moment.