Fading

Each time I sit down and try to write about this, my eyes well up with tears.   Thinking about it makes my heart feel as if it’s being wrung out. Putting such sorrow into words is almost unbearable, but I feel that I need to.

My grandmother, the person who single-handedly brought us up and taught us the most valuable lessons in life, is fading away from us. That fiery, cantankerous woman of abrasive opinions and imperious wisdom, the parent I grew up with, is rapidly, painfully disappearing, leaving only a silhouette of who she was. Her abrupt mental and physical decline came as a surprise to us.  Perfectly fine just a couple of months ago, she’s now altered and beyond our reach.

I knew that she’s changed when she stopped nagging me about my leaving the fold. She’s grown so thin and frail and her memory is almost completely gone. She doesn’t even recognize me if I don’t introduce myself. Whenever I visit her at my mother’s place, she tells me how she hates it there and begs me to accompany her to travel back home to Baguio.  I try to explain to her that she can no longer live alone.  Imploring her to continue living with my mother so she’ll be surrounded with family and taken care of has become a mournful litany that falls on deaf, uncomprehending ears.

For the past few years we paid her a visit only once or twice a year. Every time I give her a call she never fails to ask me when our next visit will be. Now I regret all those years that we, wrapped up in our own lives, have taken her for granted. Why didn’t I spend more time with her before? Why didn’t I talk to her when my words could still have left some meaning in her mind?  It is a sad, horrible truth that she’d be gone from us shortly. And I wish that through that haze of confusion, she’d recognize us, her grandchildren who have failed so miserably in showing her how much we love her.