How many kids do you have again?

I think I was only asked that about 15 times during my 4 day stay up at my parents' house while visiting my grandparents.

My grandfather is in the early stages of forgetting everything. He has lots of memories from years ago...he actually will sometimes wake in the middle of the night to be angry with my grandmother for things that happened years and years ago. He hardly remembers anything that is recent. He had no idea that my parents were doing some major renovation on their home, even though he had spent about a week helping my father work on the room by putting up sheet rock on the ceiling. You would think that would be memorable. He also had no idea how he had gotten to North Carolina from New Mexico. My father had gone to get them in his Suburban and they rode up to North Carolina together. He didn't recall the trip at all. He asked once if my grandmother knew where their airplane tickets were so that they could fly home. Once he wanted to drive their car (which was parked in their driveway in Hobbs, NM) home and let my grandmother fly home later that week. At one point he thought that they must have driven to Midland and left their car there and flown in to North Carolina. He wanted to know when they were supposed to fly home.

It was comforting to hear my grandfather call me by name when he saw me, it was just that he didn't remember my children. Which, I find tolerable, although it breaks my heart. He couldn't remember us spending a week at their home almost 2 summers ago. He thought that he had never seen my children before, even though he had spent quite a good amount of time working in the garden and yard with Aidan. He would ask me how many children I had and most of the time when he heard the answer, he would make some sound and either make a cutting sign with his hands or draw his hand across his neck and say that "nowadays that is enough, don't you think" or "that is plenty for these days". One time after hearing that I had three children, he said that I needed 2 more to catch up with the 5 that he had had.

I know that my grandmother struggles with what to do with him. He is mostly lucid and loves to work at his job at the local golf course in Hobbs. He has always been VERY independent and loves to be outdoors in the heat and working. He is in wonderful shape for being a few months shy of 80 years old. He is full of energy and hates to sit still. He has to be working and doing and going all the time. It is great to hear him talk of all the things that he knows and has experienced...and yet sad. I have always known him to be full of stories of his years on a destroyer during WWII and his knowledge of the other wars of which our country has been involved. His knowledge of the Native Americans and the west of our country is just immense. It will be a sad day indeed when he no longer remembers enough to regale us with those stories.

My grandmother is in poor health. She has survived breast cancer in a time when it wasn't common to survive. She has had other health issues and now struggles with emphysema and is on an oxygen tank most of the time. This was complicated and perhaps caused by a near lifetime of smoking heavily. She had quit several years ago, but with my grandfather's deterioration in the past few years and the stress that it has caused her, she has unfortunately in the past month started smoking again. It makes me sad, it hurts her, and she wants to quit again, but is smoking as much if not more than she was before she ever quit in the first place. I worry that she is just rushing herself towards a painful death. I love her and I hate for her to be in pain all the time and have nothing but the few hours of relief that come with a strong pain killer.

We had a good time visiting with them and my parents took them back to New Mexico this past weekend. They even took my parents' dog Pequita, a tiny chihuahua, with them. Pequita loves my grandmother, and even though my mom says that she didn't really get along with my grandmother's 2 greyhounds, that she thinks they will have a happy life together once they all get used to one another and Pequita takes over as reigning queen of the household. And we have no fear that that is exactly what she will do!

It was a bittersweet trip...not long enough, but then it never could be. It was painful to see how my grandfather is, and even more painful to see what is inevitable. He will probably not know me next time I see him. This is painful, as he was always one of my favorite people. He loved me and protected me from many a spanking when I was younger. My grandmother is a woman of strength and wisdom and I hate for her to be hurting both physically and emotionally right now. I love them both very much. And....They are still very much in love. My grandfather worries about my grandmother's pains and will ask her how she is feeling and coddle her. She watches out for him and answers his repetitive questions over and over without getting frustrated, at least not openly. They are affectionate and it is so sweet to see them hug and kiss and hold hands, to see them lay beside each other to warm up and nap. They are so close after so many years together. And I fear that my grandmother's physical health will diminish with his mental health. It will be painful as our family supports them through this time.