"have you ever been all of the way back to nowhere?"...

socrates? plato? buddha? nope, my gram. she has severe dementia and this was the pearl she dropped at her 81st birthday party last friday. the party was at the home of "mother" (aka: p.) and my dentist (her husband, but first he was my dentist). they served kfc and dairy queen cake (geez, even just recalling it there i puked in my mouth a little). if you're still with me i'll give you the guest list: me and my kids. my box-selling brother, his wife, and 2 princesses (trust me, the word 'daughters' wouldn't cover it). my birth sister (story for another day), her ex-husband/ soon to be next husband, and her hilarious son. and lastly, the star of the evening, my salty gram (quite an all american guest list) . gram lives in a nursing home at p's insistence and needs to taxi to gatherings these days as she is nearly bound to her wheelchair. she was late for her aforementioned soiree because she told the first taxi that came for her that she didn't need his help. and believe me, she's the kind of lady you listen to, even with dementia and a wheelchair. so a second taxi had to be called and the driver was told that regardless of her threats just load her up and haul her over because, after all, p. needs a new picture for her fridge of a dead eyed grandma and 5 plastic faced children forced to smile while wondering what that smell is coming from grams chair. my gram is a crusty lady who worked her whole adult life in a factory to support her family. she is a big swede who routinely broke her digits when i was young and was forever in one of those 'broken toe' clogs. she never chewed a whole stick of gum at once. she made me homemade underwear until i was 12 (i know),at which time i put my pre-adolescent fist down (read: i bought my own store bought undies with my babysitting money and she found out and made me feel guilty.) she was the only person in my family that i could tell really liked me a lot, and she let me eat doughnuts when p. wasn't looking. suffice it to say, i love my gram. she's a pain in the ass, but i love her all the more for it. i suspect she feels something similar for me. she was raised on a farm by a single mother in cambridge, mn during the great depression. her mother was only 1 of 2 people to not lose their farms during that time. my gram rebelled, like any good teenager, and rejected her mothers life to move to the city when she was 19. she married the biggest a-hole i have ever met and fought (literally) her way through life with him until he died about 6 years ago. she had 2 kids, one is p., and the other a son who died when he was 17. she wears her grief on her face to this day.

like i said before, my gram has dementia. she was diagnosed about 11 years ago when, shortly after retiring from the factory, she had a stroke that caused a terrible car accident. her mind has slowly (but steadily) been leaving her ever since. she relies on under paid workers to wipe her ass and take her to eat. she has lucid moments, and in those her enormous swedish eyes fill and run over with tears as she tells me, "it is hell getting old". i believe her. to be such a strong, independently willed and self sufficient woman who is reduced to uncontrolled bowels and not remembering who is dead and who is alive, let alone what day it is, has got to be a crazy kind of hell. at her party last week when she looked my brother right in the eye and asked if he "had ever been all of the way back to nowhere?" it wasn't the ramblings of a dead mind, it was the core of the truth that she is living with each day. she has slowly and painfully made her way back to the nowhere from which she came. from which we all come. if all is as it should be in the beginning of our "nowhere"we each start as someones dream, a glimmer in a soon-to-be parents eye. if we live a long life can it be true that we circle back to where we started? are we doing laps? and if, in fact, your beginning isn't so glorious that wouldn't really be the best of homecomings. on this return trip to nowhere, as the light grows dim and you find yourself back to where you started with a backpack full of a life lived, there seems to be a different sort of anticipation. my gram is terribly afraid of dying, i think this intense fear has actually kept her going through several near deaths over the last decade. a few times a year something happens and we all brace ourselves, prepare in our minds for that news, and always she pulls back through and hangs on a little longer to the world. her and i talk very openly about her death, something taboo to the rest of the family who subscribe to "every thing's fine" way of life. some days she says she just feels done, others she talks like she's waiting to take the drivers test so she can go back to work. i look around at what is left of her life and family, she has outlived every one of her siblings, friends, parents, and even one of her 2 children. the rest of us youngins are a small bunch and i'm the only grandchild who visits her. so what is she living for? what is she hanging on to? i suspect she doesn't really know. i suspect she is so afraid of what is on the other side of the curtain that she's rather just stay where she is. which speaks volumes to her fear as she lives, currently, in hell. no wonder her mind is shutting down. even so, she is still in there from time to time. for instance, when i arrived for a visit with her 2 days ago she was busy getting dolled up for an outing to a local restaurant with her fellow residents. she was in her new purple pants and purple sweater , and one of the staff at her nursing home was liberally applying dark purple eye shadow to her enormous eyelids. (i guess old women really do wear purple, huh.) gram looked at me from her purple haze and muttered, "i outta catch a live one looking like this". the next day i returned for another visit and asked how her lunch went, she snarked, "well, i can tell you this, i didn't get no live one". at least she can remember the content of our banter. i love witty banter, it's one of my favorite things. especially with my crazy, brash, sassy, salty, foul-mouthed, insulting, rude, and occasionally prophetic gram.