Blank Stares

Many take for granted the value of a memory. Until it’s gone.

I came to understand this value at a very young age, in relativity to life span. This is probably where my tenacity of experiences over “things” for our daughter is such a strong hold though I never really thought about it until this week.

Hearing Jay Allen’s “Blank Stares” brought forth a great amount of reflection this week after hearing it for the first time. I have, what seems like a never-ending brigade of stories and starts that pertain to what I consider the largest loss in my life, which was my Grandfather. His loss was monumental due to our connection but also because it was sudden.

By the time my Grandmother passed, it was 15 months after his demise but so much of her seemed to die slowly starting years prior.

Many times, when you’re in the middle of struggle you don’t have time to collect and deal with your thoughts. You’re just clinging to the now and trying to get theough the days as they come at you. Such was life once I made the momentous decision to abandon my college ambitions and come home to help my Grandpa with my Grandma and her rapidly advancing dementia.

Her dementia started years before her fall. I’ll never forget the day I realized her eventual fate and it came from the smallest exchange.

My husband (boyfriend at that time) and I had gone over to my grandparents house to visit. My grandma ran to the kitchen and was so excited to show us what she had gotten at Costco. She comes over with individually wrapped Rice Krispies Treats. I sort of looked at her blankly because it just struck me as odd more than anything. I wasn’t ready to jump to conclusions.

She said, “Look at these! They’re delicious.”

Me: “Uhh Grandma, you used to make these for Chris (my brother) and I for after school treats all the time when we were little! Like practically every week.”

She looked confused and said, “Ive never made these in my life.”

I looked at my Grandpa and he was focused on something else, or so it appeared. I truly think he didn’t want to acknowledge it. I see now why. He never could quite come to grips with her memory loss. I’d like to think of it as more of a perpetual optimism. Like Duke was for Allie in “The Notebook.”

When I got the call that she had fallen and broke her hip, I was walking into a Spanish class. I shouldn’t have, but the news caused me to drop where I was in the doorway. Its like the news just leveled me. I knew then something major was on its way, and it was. It was the end of October 2005.

You’d swear her hip breaking was actually pandoras box being split in two and chaos was released in her mind. The doctors said after it happened that it was somewhat typical of dementia.

By December 2005 I made up my mind that I would finish the 2006 school year in Hawaii and gear all my classes to transfer home to a commuter college so I could live close to them and drive to school and home each day. My husband and I got a house several blocks from my grandparents. Just so happened to be the same model as the first home my grandparents bought when they first came to Discovery Bay.

Her dementia was getting to the point of dangerous by then. A year after her original fall she was fading away into a different time in her life several times a day. She would revert back to her childhood most frequently. She would ask frequently, in the middle of a normal conversation, “Where are my ma and pa?” She’d ask where her brothers and sisters were. Easiest answer was to always say that they were out of the house, as most had passed on already and telling her that would be like reliving hearing the news for the first time. Very difficult for two people who root in reality all the time. (My grandpa and I). It was much harder for him to lie though. He wanted her to remember so badly he would tell her the truth and upset her because she “had to know the truth” because her hearing reality would somehow make her memory come back. It never did, and he finally started to relinquish his quest little by little.

Where Jay Allen’s song talks about how the times where the blank stares are so damaging, Id personally have to disagree. They were sadly welcomed after some of what we had to endure watching her slowly slip away from us. This next period felt like eternity because what was left of awareness left the biggest scars on my heart.

Living so close was a necessity as my grandpa’s stubborn heart did not want to relinquish Grandma’s physical presence despite the lack of her mental presence. When her sundowner episodes would ignite was the worst and they became more and more frequent. When she would go away it could take a split second and she couldn’t remember my grandpa and much worse she resorted to an intense fear of men. She would be screaming and crying thinking he was there to hurt her. Sometimes she would wake up in the middle of the night and freak out because he was in bed with her and she didn’t know who he was. Many nights would yield visits to them 3-4 times a night.

One night, on the third or fourth call my grandpa called and was more upset than normal. When we rushed over there, my Grandma seemed to remember me immediately but not him. As she started to return to us I saw a look flash across her eyes that I’ll never forget. They were pleading. Pure anguish and pleading for me to do something. She turned to my Grandpa and sobbing started apologizing profusely. He was less receptive to her apologies this time for some reason. He excused himself from the room and I got her settled back in bed, praying she would sleep the rest of the night without incidence. I stayed the rest of the night and neither Grandpa or I slept.

He told me that she was in the middle of her sundowner episode and started to make for the back deck slider, opened the door and kept screaming that she was going to throw herself over the rail to the rocks on the levee below. I understood her pleading eyes at that moment. She wasn’t out of it by that point. She came to and saw his anguish and wanted to end it, by taking her own life.

Physically she could never succeed at this. She was tiny, frail and lacked muscles to even jump much less hurl herself over. Nonetheless it became a frequent response when she would come to and see how her episodes would affect my grandpa. His ability to be fully transparent worked against him in this regard. The emotional torture of the eyes pleading to help her end her life were far more damaging than the blank stares that would come next.

A few months later Grandma would have a stroke that would finally lead my grandpa to come to grips with the fact that he could not keep her with him anymore. She became wheelchair bound and would need to be in an intensive memory care unit. She slowly slipped into becoming mentally present less and less. But such was a joyful day when we would walk into the community room and she would smile and her feet would tap excitedly to see her best friend. My grandpa would visit her religiously. Always bringing something to her from home. Flowers and tomatoes from their garden made her the happiest.

He left us in the wee hours of morning after Christmas 2008. My world stopped spinning and all I could think of was thank god for the blank stares. I don’t think she could ever handle knowing he had gone. Once in awhile she would come to during a visit and ask where Grandpa was. For the next 18 months that she lived, he was always in the garage, working on a project in his wood working shop. She never stayed with us long enough to question it.

A year after his passing I remember bringing Jaiden to meet my grandma. She was three months old by then. I remember everything about that day, including her outfit.

She had on a pair of OshKosh jeans with the little ruffles around the ankles. Red converse. A white turtleneck and a red Christmas sweater with a gingerbread girl on it.

I remember taking her out of her infant seat to show her to grandma. Blank stares. I held her in my lap, sitting in front of her for about 30 Minutes, just talking to her about being a mom and all of the things I could tell her about Jaiden. When it seemed like she would not be coming to that day, I stood up to put Jaiden back in her infant seat and grandma exclaimed…”Don’t put her back! I want to look at her some more.” That memory lives vividly in my mind.

Our memories. So precious. Taken for granted by so many. Some may think, “jeez does this girl have any happy stories!” Sure I do. Plenty of them. It’s the not so happy ones though that bring about the most reflection.

I constantly ask myself, “Would I be the person I am today if I had never experienced such rough life lessons?” The answer is unclear.

However I can say that I can appreciate the relationships I had and have based on the ones I have lost. I can appreciate my memories and experiences in life because I have had to be the one to hold onto them when others could not. I appreciate my memories because I still have the ability. We often truly don’t know the value of a memory, until they’re lost forever.