4 years

In the last years grandma’s physical powers have considerably diminished. Her mental state even more so. Her life is now fully constrained to the small room she occupies in the house of my parents. The TV in her room is barely on. The window and the door have to stay closed most of the time. She doesn’t like the fresh air coming in through the window or the eyes of the inhabitants of the house peeking behind the door. She is more comfortable eating on her own, now that for some years all her teeth left her. The joys are few, the miseries big.

All her days that go by are filled with sadness, tears, half-remembered stories of old times, pain and constant pleas for death to arrive. On her bad days, she refuses to eat or threatens she will drink all her pills in one go. On the good days, grandma’s eyes give space to sparkle when her grand-grand children come by. If they would be around all the time, there would be less room for suffering.

Since a while now, my parents have a dog. Rex is a stray dog that my parents took in from some relatives. He came as a gift to my mother, who in fact wanted a cat rather. The dog, a young and playful creature, is often allowed into the house to visit grandma. They play on her bed together. She treats him to whatever goodies she has handy. After a playing session, the dog goes back outside while grandma goes back inside, into her own world.

For the past four years all our attempts to get grandma to come out of her room, to step outside into the warmth of the summer days and to share the happenings of our world landed on deaf ears.

Except on this late sunny August day, when after four years of self-inflicted lockdown in her little room, she came outside. Without much convincing, she suddenly agreed to try and walk outside.

Step by step, supported by my mom, my dad, her shaky legs, clumsy stiff body and her old forgotten walking frame, she made it to the porch. She sat down and looked around. She saw the garden and commented on how things changed and what she noticed. She sat straight and did her best efforts to keep her eyes properly open. She was outside for over an hour. She was positive and seemed happy. We took many photos, four generations were in that moment truly together. We then sat in silence. For some moments, grandma was back alive.

The dog came to play with her. Now she was outside visiting him.

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Originally published at agingwits.tumblr.com.