My Granny

So I am sitting here in Madison, on a business trip just hanging out in the hotel watching television and reading blogs/twitter and even Facebook when I have caught up on the others.

I have 'Touched by an Angel' on. It is when Tess is in the nursing home because she has Alzheimer's. Right now they are singing to her in your room. It is hard to watch, anything with Alzheimer's is hard to watch because I can't avoid thinking about what I assume is my Granny's diagnosis. I miss her so much. I miss her calling just to check up with me. I miss visiting her. I miss her asking when I am going to move back home. Her looking for her glasses, and she finding them in many places sometimes on her head. I miss watching home movies, including the one that made me believe that Santa was a redhead.

It has been a while since I saw her, that is as the grandmother I remember. She started to noticeable fade almost 4 years ago. It was something so simple, she didn't call about my birthday. And when I talked to her afterwards, it was the same conversation over and over, 'Oh my, I forgot your birthday... I will send you a gift." I didn't care about the gift, it wasn't my Granny. I knew that something was wrong, but others thought it was her growing old (she was 85 at the time.)

Within a couple of months, there was a incident with driving onto a median and her not knowing where she was. My immediate family knew at this time that something was wrong.

The next time I saw her, was when my grandfather died. I stayed with her for a week. She seemed lost. Granted, she had just lost her husband, but she wasn't the woman I remembered. She didn't know where things were, she was childlike and lost (that is the best word for it.) She wondered around. Things around the house were misplaced. My Uncle realized that she was moving things, but not remembering. I heard a lot about the gremlins that lived in her house (not from her, but my uncle kept mentioning 'it must have been the gremlins.')

It has been a long time since I have talked to Granny. She is always in my heart and thoughts. I hope that where ever she is (the last time I actually she saw her, things she said made me think she thought she was back in England before the war) she doesn't feel trapped in her body, knowing that something is wrong. I hope that she is a young woman in London, being courted by my grandfather.

So the episode is over now. The message of this episode is handing it over to God. There is so much in my life right now that I need to realize that I can't control. All I can do is take care of myself and fix the things that I can fix. Tess has recovered and is helping one of the woman in the nursing home. I know my Granny will not recover like Tess did, but I know that one day she will be reunited with my grandfather and that she will find herself, not on my timetable, but God's.