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Thursday, December 28, 2006

Christmas Tree Cakes

Every year around this time my grandmother would stock up on boxes of Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cakes. With 200 calories and 25% of a day’s fat allowance, they were hardly healthy. But they were sure tasty, and I ate them by the boxful.

Tonight I bought a box in remembrance of my grandmother. I just unwrapped the first cake, and it was as good as I recall.

I say “in remembrance of my grandmother,” but the strange thing is that she’s still alive. In many ways, though, it’s as if she’s already passed on, carried away by a disease that sounds like a German sports figure: Alzheimer.

Last Thanksgiving – 13 months ago – we two-stepped together at the Moose Lodge. She was unsteady on her feet, but she still knew a good song when she heard one, and she still enjoyed the dance.

Eight months later – this past June – I visited her when I went home to Michigan for my other grandmother’s funeral. She wasn’t on her feet anymore. She was on the couch in her nightgown. I sat on the floor by her and she ran her fingers through my hair, styling it this way and that.

“You have the prettiest hair,” she said. She’s always said that.

A few days ago, on Christmas Eve, she no longer recognized me. She stared at me with her big brown eyes but never said my name. When I hugged her and said, “I love you,” she didn’t say it back. She kept up a train of mostly incoherent babble. I wonder what she was thinking when she looked at me. Do I know him? Should I know him?

It was another world compared to the Christmas’s we used to have – full of gifts and wrapping paper strewn all over and games of pool in the basement and grandma’s baked beans … which really consisted of a can of Bush’s loaded with extra brown sugar. Our holidays revolved around my grandmother and her wishes. Now our Christmas traditions are broken and we don’t have new ones yet.

I am in mourning for those traditions. And for my grandmother. There is no longer any pretense of normalcy, of everything’s just fine. This isn’t a way for anyone to end a life – the person first and the body second. The pain of the situation, of the mourning, expresses itself unexpectedly. Today at work I almost had to leave a meeting as tears suddenly filled my eyes. I should have let them out. Instead, I held them there, choked them down and can still feel their pressure inside me.

Through it all, the question: How do we deal with this? How do we cope? I know that it will be easier when my grandmother’s body follows the exit her mind has already made. Then it will be easier to remember her as she was our entire lives and to savor those memories. Right now I have feelings of both guilt and relief that I am hundreds of miles away from the daily effort. It is hard to watch a loved one suffer but it is also hard to not watch – to feel that I should be doing something.

Since I left for college more than 7 years ago, her most consistent words to me have been, “When are you coming home? Why can’t you live up here with me?”

Have I let her down? The logical side of me says no, but my heart isn’t so sure.

So, yes. How to deal. The answer isn’t so much provided ahead of time as experienced in the day-to-day actions. In part, this writing is part of how I’m answering that question…. Let it out. Express what’s there no matter how difficult. Don’t pretend that everything is okay if it’s not. Cash in on the love that I’ve given and let others give back. Hold on to memories.

And, of course, eat Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cakes. … Every last one of them. And enjoy them.

Posted by Aaron on December 28, 2006 11:57 PM