When I was a kid I was always kind of freaked out by old people. My maternal grandmother died when I was 6 weeks old, my maternal grandfather lived in Florida and I would only see him a few days a year, and my paternal grandparents lived in Texas. I think I saw my dad’s dad maybe 3 times, and his mother maybe 6 times. So I didn’t have a lot of exposure to old people, and when I did I thought they smelled peculiar and I never really knew why they always wanted to hug and kiss me so much.

My mom’s dad was like a log. Big and strong and thick, with a bit of a bark-like outer surface. He had a big, booming laugh that sometimes frightened me, and he wore a back brace that pressed me uncomfortably when he gave me one of his crushing hugs. He staggered when he walked because his back hurt, and the corners of his mouth were always white and chalky from the innumerable Tums he was constantly taking to curb the burn in his belly. His fingers had been caught in a giant, dangerous drop-forge machine years previous, and they were splayed out all weird from after he recovered from being one of the first people to have his fingers reattached. He smelled like a fisherman.

My mother has no grasp of the present. She talks more and more about the past as if it is happening right now. She talks about her father in ways that paint a sweeter, more nurturing, more protective, less scary, less log-like portrait. “Hey Toots!” he would call out to his young daugher to get her away from my often difficult and apparently unkind grandmother, “Wanna go fishing??” My mother has recently taken to telling us that we need to get ready to go out to the boats. Maybe because the lake is safe for her, and where she is now, is not.

My own child is almost 8. I began to notice my mother was changing shortly after he was born, most notably when she dressed him one time and put his little sock over his shoe. My son doesn’t know my mother to be anything but suffocated by the illness overtaking her brain. I tell him “Grandma used to be AWESOME.” He says, “I know, you tell me all the time.” His favorite story about his grandmother is the time she and I were watering flowers in the yard and I noticed the neighbor’s insane, unpredictable german shepard had busted his chain and was slowly, terrifyingly, creeping up behind my mother, a predatory look in it’s eyes. “Mmm!… mmm!… mmo!… “ I choked on my words as I tried to warn her. She turned and looked at me like “What the F- is wrong with you?” and caught the dog stealing up behind her in her peripheral vision. She turned full on to face the dog, cool as steel, and meeting its gaze said only, “Hello, dog.” Then she slowly, calmly, picked up the end of the broken chain, and walked the puzzled dog home.

My kid loves that story. I will tell him “Grandma has a disease in her brain. But her heart still works and she loves you, and me, and our family very much.” And he will glance to the side with ninja eyes, the slightest upturn on the corner of his mouth, and say, “Hello, dog.”

I am sad that he will only know of her lore, and not make his own memories of her that he can tell his own children someday. Hopefully sharing coloring time with her and bead time will be enough.