Scared
My grandmother is dying.
I can see death's claw around her throat, squeezing tighter and tighter every time I visit her at the nursing home. My grandmother who was always so strong and full of life, my grandmother who raised me as a child. She's dying.
It wasn't so bad back then when she could still walk around, but then she fell into depression (the first time she yelled at me for no reason I cried because she's never raised her voice at me, ever). After that we had to send her to a nursing home because we didn't have the means to take care of her - that broke my heart, even more when I played Mrs Phua in TWCT.
She's recovered from depression (I think most of it was brought on because she missed my grandfather very much) but several bad falls in the nursing home eventually led to a dislocated hipbone and now she's pretty much bedridden, and it hurts when she has to move sometimes.
And now she's in and out of hospital because of lung infections. She was discharged yesterday, but sent back to the hospital the same night because her other lung had collapsed.
My mum went to visit her after work today, and she told me that my grandmother wasn't looking good. I've never seen her look so tense. Logically speaking, I should be prepared for my grandmother to leave us at any time because she's really quite old now (she's hitting 90, if I'm not wrong) and it's better that she goes instead of struggling to stay on and suffer while alive. She's in pain and we all know it.
(And you know what's worse? Having to listen to estranged aunts squabble over whether she would prefer to have a Christian funeral because they baptised her without her consent or whether she wants the old way of cremation, where her ashes will rest beside my grandfather's. It's disgusting because I wish they'd all shut up and just let her be instead of dragging friends from church to be "witness" to what my grandmother wants, which is for everyone to just let her rest.)
The problem is that I don't want my grandmother to leave us. I don't want the woman who took care of me from infancy to leave me. It's selfish of me, I know, but knowing that didn't stop me from whispering a prayer into her ear when I visited her just before my Bandung trip, begging her to at least hold out till I was back from Bandung. I didn't want to have to hear about the inevitable while I wasn't around to see her one last time.
Every time I tell myself that typing all this down is a melodramatic waste of time (I started drafting this last week when she had that lung infection), something like this happens and her status shifts from "recovering, don't worry so much" to "start worrying".
I don't fear death - hell, you should hear how I talk about this subject, I love it - but I do fear death taking those I care for away from me. Again, it's a completely selfish notion, but a human one all the same.
And I can't talk to anyone about it - I can't talk to M because she's gone and shut everyfuckingone out from her world without a word of warning (no hey, I'm going to be MIA for a while, don't worry about me because I WAS FUCKING WORRIED BUT HEY WHO FUCKING GIVES A SHIT RIGHT), I can't talk to Aoi-kun because we're not that close and I don't know where the fuck he is, maybe he's gotten bored of me (because who am I kidding, I'm just any other person on the Internet, am I not?), I can't tell any of my other friends like Kira and Zac because they have other things to worry about too and I can't talk to my parents because have you seen how my dad and I even talk to each other anymore and when I ask my mum if she's okay all she says is that she's tired and walks away from me.
Yeah, my mum's never been the emotive sort - and they wonder why I bottle everything up.
So this is all I can do. Type, bottle, worry, repeat. I'm visiting my grandmother tomorrow, and I want to go because it's my grandmother and nothing is going to stop me from visiting her even if I can't understand what she says anymore, but at the same time I don't want to see how tight that claw around her neck has gotten.
It wasn't so bad back then when she could still walk around, but then she fell into depression (the first time she yelled at me for no reason I cried because she's never raised her voice at me, ever). After that we had to send her to a nursing home because we didn't have the means to take care of her - that broke my heart, even more when I played Mrs Phua in TWCT.
She's recovered from depression (I think most of it was brought on because she missed my grandfather very much) but several bad falls in the nursing home eventually led to a dislocated hipbone and now she's pretty much bedridden, and it hurts when she has to move sometimes.
And now she's in and out of hospital because of lung infections. She was discharged yesterday, but sent back to the hospital the same night because her other lung had collapsed.
My mum went to visit her after work today, and she told me that my grandmother wasn't looking good. I've never seen her look so tense. Logically speaking, I should be prepared for my grandmother to leave us at any time because she's really quite old now (she's hitting 90, if I'm not wrong) and it's better that she goes instead of struggling to stay on and suffer while alive. She's in pain and we all know it.
(And you know what's worse? Having to listen to estranged aunts squabble over whether she would prefer to have a Christian funeral because they baptised her without her consent or whether she wants the old way of cremation, where her ashes will rest beside my grandfather's. It's disgusting because I wish they'd all shut up and just let her be instead of dragging friends from church to be "witness" to what my grandmother wants, which is for everyone to just let her rest.)
The problem is that I don't want my grandmother to leave us. I don't want the woman who took care of me from infancy to leave me. It's selfish of me, I know, but knowing that didn't stop me from whispering a prayer into her ear when I visited her just before my Bandung trip, begging her to at least hold out till I was back from Bandung. I didn't want to have to hear about the inevitable while I wasn't around to see her one last time.
Every time I tell myself that typing all this down is a melodramatic waste of time (I started drafting this last week when she had that lung infection), something like this happens and her status shifts from "recovering, don't worry so much" to "start worrying".
I don't fear death - hell, you should hear how I talk about this subject, I love it - but I do fear death taking those I care for away from me. Again, it's a completely selfish notion, but a human one all the same.
And I can't talk to anyone about it - I can't talk to M because she's gone and shut everyfuckingone out from her world without a word of warning (no hey, I'm going to be MIA for a while, don't worry about me because I WAS FUCKING WORRIED BUT HEY WHO FUCKING GIVES A SHIT RIGHT), I can't talk to Aoi-kun because we're not that close and I don't know where the fuck he is, maybe he's gotten bored of me (because who am I kidding, I'm just any other person on the Internet, am I not?), I can't tell any of my other friends like Kira and Zac because they have other things to worry about too and I can't talk to my parents because have you seen how my dad and I even talk to each other anymore and when I ask my mum if she's okay all she says is that she's tired and walks away from me.
Yeah, my mum's never been the emotive sort - and they wonder why I bottle everything up.
So this is all I can do. Type, bottle, worry, repeat. I'm visiting my grandmother tomorrow, and I want to go because it's my grandmother and nothing is going to stop me from visiting her even if I can't understand what she says anymore, but at the same time I don't want to see how tight that claw around her neck has gotten.
Comments
Post a Comment