Monday, February 28, 2005
missing.
my grandmother is having her leg amputated. she got a cut on her foot, and apparently there's no blood flowing to her leg (and i don't understand how this wasn't a problem before, why her leg isn't falling off or something) and so the cut became gangrene and a bone infection, and there is no good answer, so they are cutting it off.
she's eighty-seven, or so. she's with it occasionally, but really really sad and tired and mostly confused, especially since the pain meds for the bone infection came on board. she made a joke at the dinner table the other night, apparently, about how the next time there was a referendum about euthanasia, she would vote for it. there isn't much that makes her happy. there isn't much that's fun to do. and not because she's a poor sport about dying, but because it's awful, awful to be dying slowly.
she's started hallucinating that a boy my dad went to grade school with is with her in the nursing home. she makes room for him on the bed, she gives him some of her dinner. the operation might be happening today, and she might die on the table, and my parents are saying it would be a blessing. i can only think of how much more horrible the awful will be when she wakes up without a leg, and so i hope, maybe, that the best thing happens. whatever that is. i don't think i know what it would be, but i hope it happens.
everyone has been saying they're sorry, and thinking about me, and i feel fake and horrible about it. my leg is pink and soft and under this desk. my grandmother is a kind, good person, but we don't know each other that well. i'm getting the gut-wrenches about this because it puts some dark fingers on my ideas about what old will be like, or about what taking care of my parents will be like, but really my feeling for her is my feeling for a general human person, combined with my fear for my dad. because it's not easy to wish someone dead, not even if it's the best of a field of bad possibles.
she's eighty-seven, or so. she's with it occasionally, but really really sad and tired and mostly confused, especially since the pain meds for the bone infection came on board. she made a joke at the dinner table the other night, apparently, about how the next time there was a referendum about euthanasia, she would vote for it. there isn't much that makes her happy. there isn't much that's fun to do. and not because she's a poor sport about dying, but because it's awful, awful to be dying slowly.
she's started hallucinating that a boy my dad went to grade school with is with her in the nursing home. she makes room for him on the bed, she gives him some of her dinner. the operation might be happening today, and she might die on the table, and my parents are saying it would be a blessing. i can only think of how much more horrible the awful will be when she wakes up without a leg, and so i hope, maybe, that the best thing happens. whatever that is. i don't think i know what it would be, but i hope it happens.
everyone has been saying they're sorry, and thinking about me, and i feel fake and horrible about it. my leg is pink and soft and under this desk. my grandmother is a kind, good person, but we don't know each other that well. i'm getting the gut-wrenches about this because it puts some dark fingers on my ideas about what old will be like, or about what taking care of my parents will be like, but really my feeling for her is my feeling for a general human person, combined with my fear for my dad. because it's not easy to wish someone dead, not even if it's the best of a field of bad possibles.
