One of my earliest memories was of my grandmother chastising me for something I had done. Mind you, at the time, I’m pretty sure I didn’t do anything special – save for being three years old and doing what children that age do – to receive a tongue-lashing, but children can be like that sometimes in their youth – curious, but annoying.
But I came to learn that my grandmother was a grumpy person. It would be many years until I got a glimpse as to why she seemed so grumpy, so fierce – even after a stroke and developing dementia. My grandmother had a hard life. Being a Black woman in the 30s and 40s must have been difficult in ways that I can’t even imagine, and to successfully survive in that period would have required a strength that is truly unfair to ask of people.
But I was lucky to grow up with my grandmother in proximity. I didn’t spend a massive chunk of time with her – mostly because she was strict – but the time I spent with her wasn’t all bad. In fact, when she was more relaxed, she was pleasant to be around. I remember that she used to regale me with tales of her younger days of nursing, or tell me tales of events that happened in her life. I was too young to really appreciate it, though. I was no older than perhaps 10 or 11, and spending time with an old lady with a TV wasn’t my idea of “fun” at the time. But I’ll never forget the times she would see me off as I walked back home, standing on the pavement with her walking stick, observing until I would turn the corner and was able to see the door to my home, before going back in. That itself was a kindness, its own form of love.
Now that I really think about it, my grandmother was frugal with her love, and she wasn’t so good at showing it. It’s not hard to feel offended when a person seemingly makes comments about you without provocation, but I think in her own way, that was how she would encourage you to behave in a different way, a way more suitable for you. Of course, I wouldn’t say that such words were ever polite, nor was she surprised when people took offense from her words. Nor were those words ever really able to be viewed as constructive – such was her way. But I now see it as a women who had lived nothing short of a tough life trying to toughen up those around her she saw as too soft – too vulnerable to the harshness of the world, for if her words got under your skin, what would others that meant to do you harm be able to accomplish?
This is all conjecture, though. I never got a chance to ask her any of these things. When I had the mind to do so, it was kind of too late – the dementia had claimed most of her by then. Conversations were, as anyone who has lived with anyone with dementia could tell you, almost always the same. Her ability to remember things both recent and distant began to vanish, and to me it felt like the more recent memories she had acquired were the first ones to go. After a time, she couldn’t distinguish who I was by face alone. This much is no longer surprising as I was in my early teens at that point – the difference between a child and a teenager could trip anyone up, and I am not surprised this is what caught my grandmother out. But she still remembered my name for a long time until she couldn’t.
I don’t think my grandmother was a bad person. I don’t think many people are actually bad people. People are a lot more complicated than to be sorted into categories of just “good” and “bad” – people are nuanced – there’s always a reason as to why a person behaves in the way that they do. But for my grandmother, as her condition worsened, so too did her situation. I say this not as a slight towards her carers or family, but as an acknowledgement. I didn’t know my grandmother to be the person who had “friends”, nor did I ever really ask if she had any. With the reduced mobility as a result of her stroke, she was massively dependent on others to take her out and about, if anywhere at all. She didn’t quite seem amicable with others, and anyone who knew my grandmother well enough was aware that as readily as she would converse with you she would insult you, and I can imagine that also served as a barrier against interacting with her.
As the dementia progressed, she quickly lost no small amount of her abilities to live an independent life. I know this because I saw it all – of all my family, the only ones who spent more time caring for her than I were my mother and uncle – her daughter and son respectively. But the strangest thing was not the confusion wrought by the dementia, or her vocalized desire to die – but when she was kind. My grandmother was not the type of person to hand out compliments (as far as I know). But the times in which I went there and she was so grateful to me for doing tasks for her or even just coming to visit – they were weird. Not wrong, not unpleasant, but certainly not the woman I knew. But I suppose I must come to terms with the fact I didn’t know her well enough, and I never will.
My grandmother is one of the last of her siblings, a woman who spent her final years lonely and confused by no fault of her own. With a lack of friends and a global pandemic, her loneliness only grew worse as her ability to remember grew ever more diminished, her isolation never truly punctured for she could not remember. But her suffering has now come to an end, and the burden to ever move on consigned to those she left behind.
I couldn’t really know you, but I’m happy to have had you in my life. Rest well, grandma.
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