Words to live up to: Shit my nanny says

Please note: when I wrote this, I had been in the mountains for two weeks with no company except for people who did not speak english. When I’m alone I think way too much and get easily upset. The writing of this essay is what happened on one of those upset days.

Here is my essay:

            My grandmother has dementia. I believe it’s progressed to Alzheimer’s disease at this point, but at the moment I’m not so sure (this statement will make more sense later). At one point, she was the most important person in my life. She still is, in a way, or she would be, but she’s not really my nanny anymore. If anybody saw me on the verge of crying/crying/post-crying in c105 while writing my Leaving Home essay for writing, the next passage will probably clarify a few things about my behaviour that day.

            This essay was not at all what I had intended to write. I just have this irrational fear whenever I go somewhere far away (I’m in Italy while I write this, which explains its tardiness) that she’ll pass away and my family won’t tell me and I’ll miss the funeral. I’m crying and snotting everywhere as I write this, that’s how worked up I get. Jill can attest to how sexy my crying is… I guess you can say I’ll get you wet. You should see me now.

            Without further ado, here are some quotes from my grandmother (In chronological order corresponding to the progression of her illness)

• “Here she comes, Miss America”- singing to me when I was young
• “I’ll take you shopping and we’ll get a few nice outfits”- My mom worked more than full time when I was young and didn’t have a lot of time to take me shopping.
• “The reindeer and santa came while you were asleep and ate all the cookies. Blitzen ate that one there!”
• “I’m dizzy”
• “Oh, Fuck off Jack”- Jack, my grandfather, infallibly visits her in the nursing home every day. He tried to fake illness so he could get into the nursing home too, but he was rejected for being too healthy.
• “That Jack. He never comes to visit me.”
• “This is a nice house. It could use a little work but I think you should buy it” Regarding my parents’ home of 25 years.
• “He’s cute. Who is he?” Regarding my brother
• *Incoherent Italian Gibberish* Once fluent, she can no longer put a sentence together.
• “And who are you again?”

These quotes may not seem like words of expectations, hopes, dreams, advice or pedantry, but to me they mean so much more. They sting. Even thinking of my nanny hurts more than an obscene form of torture (think rolling around in a pool of open safety pins and then cooling off in a tub of vodka, rubbing alcohol and lemon juice). Her progressing dementia and increasing age (She’s 91 this august) should compel me to go visit her more. She lives a mere fifteen minute drive from my house. She’s my Nanny, the same one who had tea parties with me, picked out my clothes for me (I’ve always been hopeless with style), Changed my diapers, made me eat with a placemat so I wouldn’t spill, brought chocolate dipped cookies that her baker friend had let her make at his store, and rubbed my back when I was homesick.

My nanny and I were so close, and now she’s become someone else. It happened slowly, which hurt even more. Every millisecond she’s lucid (which admittedly happens less and less every time I see her) just makes everything hurt more. It’s a tease, and the idea of her getting better is so seductive that for a moment you forget it will never, ever, ever happen. Afterwards, reality hurts even more.

For this reason, I never visit her. I go when my mom invites me, which is rare, but I don’t go as often as she does. She quite literally goes religiously, every week after church. She doesn’t ask me to join because she knows how sad I get. Selfishly, I’m glad she doesn’t invite me because it means I have an excuse for not going. She always brings back funny stories about how my nanny, when asked how she was doing, said “Just ducky, dear.” She tells me about how she hits on hospital porters, and other funny stories, but never news of th einevitable: that every day she forgets who we are, who my grandpa is, and loses just a little more of herself.

The evidence is depressing. On mothers day, I saw a book she had made with a worker at her home. It consisted of an interview with my nanny and related pictures in a little scrapbook. In said book, my nanny claimed to to love Niagara falls, adore baseball, and claimed to have spent three years in Florida. None of the above is true. She pretends to know who you are, and makes up facts about herself and her family to prevent embarrassment. She will ask you who you are again, dear, before insisting that she make you her famous veal cutlets someday.

I hate myself for it, but I just can’t go. She’s gone and we all know it. I just can’t bring myself to face it or pretend that everything is fine. I wish I could tell her how much she means/meant to me, but she won’t understand, let alone remember. I wish she could be the nanny I know for even an hour so I could tell her. I wish she had developed Alzheimer’s when I was older so I could have had the ability/maturity to tell her what she means to me. I wish.

I love you, Nanny. I’m sorry for everything. I hope you’re happy, wherever it is you went. I still love you and I will love the stranger who has taken your place, but I wish you were here with me to have helped me pick out my prom dress and to make me eat with a placemat just one more time.