Bonka

I have returned to work after having a week off and visiting with my grandmother. She is 82 years old and wow is it hard seeing her age. I saw her get off the plane and sit in the wheelchair waiting for her. She looked tiny and vulnerable. It had been only a year since I last saw her, but a year can change so much.

Physically she has shrunk severely. She was always about 5’1” when I was a kid. She is now 4’9”. This doesn’t seem to bother her, in fact, the opposite. She likes being called “tiny” and “little” and you can’t convince her that the ever-rising hump on her upper back is not a good thing and the real reason she is now 4’9”. Her body is starting to fail her as evidence of the handful of pills she takes every morning and evening.

Mentally she is slowing down. My grandmother was always sharp as a tack and quick with her tongue. Lately I get the impression that it is just too much work for her to think and so she just doesn’t. This also means that she says inappropriate things (not really that new, but it is worse than it used to be). She gossips and “whispers” (or attempts to whisper) about people’s appearances. But just when you think she has completely lost all mental capacity she counts up the points on her dominoes with zeal and doesn’t miss a play. Life does come full circle. For the last 8 days I have two children in my house. Both who I love dearly in different ways… but one of them used to care for me.

We didn’t do a lot all week. We went for short walks, we talked about moving her into an apartment, we played Skip-bo and Mexican Train dominoes (her favorites), and talked about moving her into an apartment, we went for tea and talked about moving, we cooked meals and drove to Spokane where we talked about the possibility of her moving again. It was a routine topic of conversation that was rarely brought up by me, frequently by her, but always ended with the statement, “but I am just not ready”. No one wants to boot her out of her house, but doubts whether she will ever be ready are pervasive.

I feel as though this post is nearly completely negative. It was not a negative week, in fact, it was a good week with some negativity sprinkled in. We talked a lot about her family, where they came from. I found out that her mom’s parents, my great greats immigrated from Sweden (we knew this), but they changed their names to Turnquist from Pedersen, because there were so many Pedersen’s in the US. Turn recognized a turning point in their lives, I am not sure what “quist” meant. She brought me more old pictures, which I love. And Leif really took to “gamma”. I was pushing him to call her “Bonka” as I did as a child. But “gamma” took hold with Leif. This surprised me actually since he had just had “gamma” and “bompa” (my mom and stepdad) visit just two weeks ago. I wasn’t sure he would understand multiple “gammas” at this point. But there was never any hesitation.

I didn’t get much done last week because even though both Hans and I were home, we couldn’t just leave Leif to play with my grandmother. She is unable to lift him. I got on the computer only rarely, since everytime I walked to the computer, she followed and would ask endless questions. I finally found it easier to just ignore that work and lives were going on around me and accept that I did not need to stay caught up. One night, however, I was asked to provide some surface science analysis and insight. I could not forego this since I am working, hard, to get myself fully immersed back in surface science. That was a difficult night because my grandmother viewed my working on my laptop feverishly for a couple hours as neglect towards her. She got very upset with me and ended up going in her room and sitting… by herself… and crying.

As far as social styles go, my grandmother is a driver-driver or expressive-driver. She cares little about others and doesn’t seek to engage other people. The entire time we were there she asked me once about my work and once asked me if I knew what I would say if someone asked me about my life. I feel as though she really doesn’t know me as an adult.

One day I asked her if I could record her talking about her family. She seemed excited, this is something that she does well! But as soon as I hit “record” on the video camera she froze. Then she went into her drama routine. She should have been an actress, not a nurse! She was selective with her stories and when I prompted her towards anything that might be deemed controversial, she quickly steered away. No words about her being alone and pregnant with her first son, no words about why she moved to her parents house and left her husband (my grandfather) for a few months. I know all of this from her telling me bits and pieces. I have pieced together the infidelity, the out of wedlock pregnancy. Nope, it was like she was reading a very happy, sunny story to all of us out there in TV land who might view the video someday. There are nuggets in there about her life on the farm, our family, her life in nursing school. But most of it is details about specific patients she cared for and how they died. I finally shut off the camcorder and like pressing a button, suddenly she had the world to talk about.

Ah yes, back to the negatives apparently… I suppose that means it is time to adjourn. Pictures will follow!