(written before Tuesday...)

9/10/01
Pine Island, Minnesota
10:00 pm

I woke late this morning, in time to see G and his daughter off to work and school. I took a shower, sat and talked to Dana, the nanny, for a little bit, then took off down the highway towards Rochester.

A couple of hours later, I arrived in Pine Island. My grandfather had said that he’d leave the door unlocked while he was gone to the doctor’s this morning. When I arrived, though, the doors were locked and there was nobody around. I wandered down towards Rochester, wanting to pick up some bottled water and some Kleenex. I sat and had some coffee, looking and listening at the people who went by.

The country here is wide and rolling, farmland and little towns alongside the highway. It’s lovely, especially since the weather is cool and dry, with the occasional fluffy cloud floating by.

After my grandfather arrived home, we went to see my grandmother. I had never actually been in a nursing home, and now consider it one of the most depressing places I have ever been. It was not so much that all the people were old, but that they were simply not home behind their eyes. As we sat at a table with my grandmother, several nurses came to get a man at an adjacent table. Once they got him standing up, he shuffled by, his expression utterly blank. He was somewhere else entirely.

My grandmother recognized me right off, and we had a somewhat animated conversation. She seemed well enough, and rather resentful of my grandfather, who alternately chatted loudly with the nurses and hovered protectively over my grandmother. Her usual jibes at him, instead of coming off as feistiness, came off as frustration. She is aware of where she is, and she wants to go home. Unfortunately, she has a short-term memory only a little longer than a goldfish’s—she was surprised to see me this afternoon, and she was surprised again to see me when we stopped by tonight after supper. She will be surprised again to see me tomorrow.

She can be told over and over again that she won’t be going home soon, and she will never remember it any longer than a few minutes.

She is smaller than I remember, and more bent. She seems all right for long minutes, chatting brightly with us. Then she glances away, and I can see a look in her eyes that says that she knows what’s going on.

As we left, there was a woman on a stretcher down the hall with her arms crossed across her chest, rocking back and forth and muttering something that sounded like "die…die….die..."

And as we left, my grandfather told an older gentleman in a wheelchair, "Take it easy." He looked at me and my grandfather, a shrewd look in his eyes. "I'd rather be told to work hard, myself. Yep, rather be told to do good work."

I felt somewhat guilty for being young and strong, for being able to walk out of those doors, get into the car, and walk away.

Gods forestall the onset of helplessness and give me the courage to face it with dignity.

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