I thought that when I came home, everything would be exactly as I left it, including my grandmother.
Many days were spent similarly: I’m sitting at my kitchen table, across from my Ammama, grandmother in Tamil. It’s her favourite spot, and I can’t understand why. The screen door to our backyard is open, letting in the stifling early July heat, and I can hear our clock ticking too loudly in the silent house. It’s set five minutes ahead, as it always has been.
I always imagined this house, this place, as an unchanging landmark in the sea of my life.
Now, during the first summer I’ve been back home since moving away for school three years ago, I realized I was mistaken and naïve for thinking that in the first place. While it may look the same, I feel wrong-footed and unsure. Perhaps someone’s played a trick on me and moved all the furniture two inches to the left, I thought to myself.
My Ammama has lived with us since I was three years old, but despite having spent nearly my entire life around her, I can’t say I know her very well.
I grew up taking care of her, and she grew old taking care of me. Between that, we didn’t have much time to talk.
In my personal experience with older people, I’ve found age impacts the mind in ways that are not always easy to understand from the outside.
Of course, she has always had her good days and bad days, as we all do, but this summer has felt like a decline I wasn’t expecting. Over the past four months, I’ve yet to find a way to communicate that doesn’t involve a lot of yelling, followed by frustrated huffing, then unnecessary panic, and once again, more yelling.
I won’t pretend there weren’t times like these growing up; in fact, it was most of the time, but between them, I remember a grandmother who was present and loved me.
No one wants to admit to taking time with a loved one for granted. I don’t want to admit that I’d get mad at someone who genuinely can’t help it, but it is a very real feeling for anyone who has been a primary caregiver.
I will always be grateful for the time we’ve gotten to spend together, but I can’t deny it’s easier to say aloud than to feel in those moments of frustration.
What I can say with confidence is that it’s unbelievably hard to care for someone as they age.
In elementary school, she would try to pick me up from the bus stop. Even during the wintertime, she would walk out of the house without so much as shoes or a coat and wander around our block looking for the drop-off spot. No matter how much I begged her to stay home, it didn’t matter. In her mind, if she didn’t leave the house, I wouldn’t come home.
She did not enjoy leaving the house, and she definitely did not enjoy the winter, but what mattered most was looking after me. I hoped she understood that I wanted to look out for her too.
What’s changed now is that moments of lucidity and peace are less common. She isn’t fully present anymore.
The hardest part is that I have now gained the maturity to really try to know her and connect with her as a real person, not just as a kid, but unfortunately, it seems we’ve run out of time for that.
She’s forgetting me now, and she’s forgetting the time we spent together. She’s so stuck in her own head, and the ways I used to help her don’t work anymore.
If you asked me what I am most proud of myself for, it would not be my high marks in art or getting into university. It’s not even the time I got a hole-in-one at mini golf, which could only have been the result of a miracle.
What I am most proud of is being the best at getting my Ammama to laugh.
It happened rarely, and the times in between were mainly solemn, upset, or apathetic, but when she laughed, I swear it felt like seeing the sun rise. Her whole face split into this wide smile, and I felt like she was truly looking at me, seeing me.
But it hasn’t worked as well anymore. Maybe I’ve gotten less funny, or she’s in less of a laughing mood; regardless, I am no longer the best at making my Ammama laugh.
I’d like to think her favourite spot is the kitchen table, but I don’t necessarily know that to be true. She was always sat there when I woke up in the morning and when I came home from school, but she’s never said one way or the other. I guess I never asked.
I liked to think a lot of things about my Ammama that I don’t necessarily know to be true.
I liked to think I was the best at making her laugh.
Part of growing up is realizing things change, whether materially or how you perceive them. The way I know my grandmother is fundamentally different to the way my mom and aunt know her, to the way her husband knew her, to the way her friends and family had known her.
The ways I remember her may be rose-tinted, with time and distance.
Though I miss who my Ammama was, my life is filled with people who spend time with her and love her. They tell me stories of her life and past, so I’ve been getting to know her all over again, just through their eyes.
While I wish I could talk with her freely and learn everything about her life, it is a selfish wish. It’s not something she is withholding intentionally or something she needs right now.
It was also selfish to expect our relationship to stay the same or for her to stay the same. I haven’t, so why should she?
“Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; re-made all the time, made new,” wrote one of my favourite authors, Ursula K. Le Guin.
This summer I have tried to learn new ways to make my Ammama laugh. If I ask to take a photo of her, I might be rewarded with a smile. It’s lucky for both of us that being away at school has cured the last of my awkward teenage camera repulsion and replaced it with an obsessive need to capture everything.
Even if we are both changing, our paths still run parallel to each other.
Tags
family, family illness, Social connection
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