Deja Vu

When I was 4 months pregnant with I., my grandmother tumbled to her death in her home downstairs in the middle of the night. My mother and I found ourselves inserted into my grandfather's life immediately. We always loved him but had been prevented access to him due to my mentally ill grandmother. As we worked the whole summer at their house, trying to sift through a monumental amount of merchandise, memories, financials, and junk, we quickly understood that my grandfather was suffering from Alzheimer's. It didn't make us love him any less and it was amazing that his long term memory was still intact but short term was nonexistent. Then he began having fearful hallucinations that would cause him to say and do inappropriate things.

I feel as though it's deja vu because now that the ammonia is reaching Mark's brain, he is saying some bizarre things. Sometimes he understands that it's a bizarre comment but at times he doesn't understand what is going on and it saddens me greatly. His wife told me that after she signed the forms to get him out of the hospital and the doctors came in to release him, Mark thought they were all trying to put him down like a dog and he started begging and crying that he didn't want to die yet. I can't even imagine what that must have been like for her to hear her husband beg like that, I'm so thankful I didn't hear that because it would have reverberated in my dreams. As it is, two nights this week, I've woken up because I'm sobbing and the noise wakes me up. It really seems like deja vu in that I feel powerless to help someone I love and they are out of their mind literally, but it's worse because Mark hasn't had 80+ years to live his life - he hasn't even had 40 years and neither have I so it's too soon, too unexpected, too unfair and it pisses me off and saddens me to the point of numbness. Not tears, just that numb depression, unability to feel, great anger. His wife introduced me to his doctors this week as his best friend and I felt honored but when he's gone, what am I? What is left that is meaningful? I know I am a wife, a mother, a daugher but who was there by my side during the tough times, encouraging me, laughing with me, enjoying happy hour side by side, cementing our friendship? Mark, that's who. After that V. but before that, it was Mark and I how do I forget those times? All our crazy thoughts, discussions and memories - they haven't faded away and I'm not ready to let go yet.