Gardens

My mom visits my grandma at the Gardens every day, sometimes twice.  Lately, there seems to have been a shift in behaviors or cognition.  It seems as if Grandma isn't really happy to see my mom anymore.  She's happy to see her, but it fades quickly. 

A day or two ago Mom went to see her and she was in the family room watching The Little Mermaid with some of the other residents.  Grandma was glad to see her, but she didn't want to leave the room.  She didn't want to go for a walk.  She didn't want to go outside and sit at the table.  She said the movie just started and she wanted to watch it, so Mom just left her to The Little Mermaid. 

Is this a good thing?  I think it's a good thing.  Maybe.  The nursing home has become her home.  The other residents and staff are her family now.  It's sad, and heart breaking for my mom, but in a way it's almost a relief.  They are good to my grandma and she's happy there, for the most part.  (She does NOT like bath day.)  They do arts and crafts and some afternoons they bake cookies.  Sometimes they blow up balloons the residents bat them around, trying to keep them in the air.  She loves that one. 

She's all but forgotton my mom, her sons, grandchildren.  It's a good sad, if that is an actual feeling.  My mom is sad that she's been replaced by the other residents and staff, but relieved, I think, that she's taken care of, to the point that Mom is no longer needed.

In a way, my grandma died the day she was put in the nursing home.  That was the end of her life as she knew it, as we knew it.  It was a death.  She is still alive, of course, but it is different.  She acts different.  She doesn't even look like my grandma any more.  I live three houses down from the nursing home and my mom walks grandma over a lot to see me and my cats (and to get out of the sun.  Mom tries to tell me it's to see me, but I know better.)  When they are walking past, I wouldn't even recognize Grandma if it weren't for Mom. 

The grandma I knew growing up is gone.  I loved going to her house when I was little because she had Count Chocula cereal.  We weren't allowed to eat that stuff at home but we could have it at Grandma's.  I couldn't wait to eat my cereal, which is weird, because I hated Count Chocula.  It gets all soggy and gross and the marshmallows dissolve.  It was more of what the cereal represented than my actual fondness.  Yuck.  And Grandma had the BEST jewelry.  Tons of blingy, crappy jewelry.  I could play with her jewelry box for hours.  That grandma is gone.  The lady sitting in a diaper is not my grandma.  Looks kind of like her, though. 

It's difficult trying to come to terms with how you feel about an elderly parent or grandparent.  I still love her, of course, but admittedly not like I used to and that creates a lot of guilt.  IT would be so easy to just pretend like she's not there and move on.  I used to judge people who did that, but now I understand.  I can't imagine, cannot imagine, what it would be like if my own mother was in that situation.  It's incomprehensible.