Diagnosed..?

Oh wow R, I've gotten the same popcorn cup from also Jumbo for our trad friday tech donated nights! Can't wait till we have another one :D

Granma and I had a fun day shopping for ice cream, but I think I've made a personal diagnosis on her "change", so to say.

I caught her leaving the house and casually tagged along to the supermarket where she said she was intending to get some ginger and sesame. When we got there, she needed a little reminder of what to do there so I reminded her, and she got the two in a shopping cart. So far, smooth. And then, she asked me if I wanted to get some ice cream. I said yes! And so for the four of us in the house, she got not four, but 11. She has a tendency of liking a little extra food in the house, courtesy of war time experience, so she generally gets a couple of extras in case there was a guest (which used to happen often but hardly these days. They're outliving most of their friends.) so we don't stop her although it is quite wasteful if thrown, or unhealthy if someone ends up eating two or three servings of that ball of sugar or this bar of fat. But the number this time was truly odd now that I think about it. I didn't think much about it at the time though, can one ever have too many ice cream in the house unless there wasn't a fridge? I also like the idea of extra ice cream much better than other time sensitive desserts.

But, when we came back, brought the ginger to mom and then were casually chatting, my friend Y called, and as soon as I got off the phone she started talking about when Y were staying with us. How we ate, what we did, where we slept, such and such. Y has never stayed in this house of mine where granma always is.

My sister brings her friends around and sometimes they stay, so I laughingly told granma oh that wouldn't be Y, I think you're mistaking for my sister M's friend. Then, all of a sudden, granma was a very upset granny, stern and bitter, insisting that it was for sure Y. I asked her what she knows about Y, and apparently she is a friend of mine from the school near, to which I have never been. I met Y in another country where I was living at the time.

This is just like how granpa was before he was diagnosed with Alzheimers. They start to forget, and to fill in the blank they mix and match their memories which sort of ends up creating a new one. I know which friend of M's granma is talking about. The one that did indeed stay here, ate what she said she served, I don't know what they did but M is friends from her from the neighboring school.

We first thought that granma is just having a difficult time adjusting to the new life, one without granpa, but maybe that's not it.

She has always been kind of a scatterbrain, but recently she's worsened a lot. Like she's cooking something, and then she does something completely strange for what she is cooking so it becomes not what she wanted, and she's a bit confused why it happened. She doesn't seem to think that it was herself that did it, and sometimes asks us to please let her know if we wanted to do something to what she's cooking.

Hopefully this is just a temporary thing. Result of her getting off the huge responsibility she had while taking care of the late granpa. I don't know though, we thought that when granpa started being funny like this and it was there to stay.

I actually think though, that dementia is not a bad thing to have. It's like an anaesthetic to bitterness in life. Something protecting you from the fear of death. If I think about it, dying takes much preparing for, and once I'm done preapring I might be impatient to go on living till I don't know when. Granpa was a very happy person for the last several years of life. He forgot about all the people he lost to war. He didn't remember that he could not have a son despite being the eldest male in his family. In fact a couple of days before he passed away, or was it the day before? anyways, he introduced my dad to me as his son of whom he is very proud of. I thought that that was really cute. This granpa is my mom's dad, so I guess he is a son in law but he's not exactly a son, you know? If dementia can help them have what they wanted and live happily, I want everybody to have one before they die.

H