Grampa

The hospital has white walls, bright white lights, I'm not really a fan of them, I always feel a little sick on the few occasions I have to go into one. My father and I talk casually, though it's already slipped my mind what we were talking about. We take the elevator to the third floor, standing in the relative silence of the elevator’s hum as it moves upwards; I'm holding a white vanilla birthday cake in my arms, a cheery "happy birthday" written across it in red icing, a stark contrast to my heavy heart. The doors slide open and we step into an open room with a door to the secured section at the end of a hallway; the nurses sitting behind the island of desks outside don’t even look up as we walk by. The Alzheimer’s unit is sealed by a heavy door that requires a code to get in and out of.

Elderly people wander aimlessly inside, their eyes glassy and hollow, they move slowly, without any purpose. Their movements more of a lurch, like the zombies you see in movies. They communicate with grunts and groans; many have lost the ability to communicate any other way. Others just simply sit and stare, at the wall, at the floor, out a window; they don't look at anything in particular, their eyes uncomprehending and cold, like a child lost in a department store. Their expressions sad, an unsettling sight to see on their wizened faces, their is skin so pale, most of them gaunt, their skin stretched over bone and no muscle, you can tell their deaths' aren't far off.

We walk down the long hallway of these zombie elders, some of their faces brightening as if they recognize us, but only to slip away as quickly as it came when they realize they don't know who we are. They don’t know who they are. Flashes of memory come to them and they grasp at the edges of sanity that only fizzle and fade. Fizzle and fade, no memories stay for long as they are lost in a sea of utter confusion. We find my grandfather sitting at the very end of the wing in a room aptly named "the sun room" large windows opening up to let the setting sun's last dying rays cast over tall buildings, to brighten it and compared to the rest of the wing, which is drab and dark, this place isn't quite so depressing.

He sits with his head slumped forward slightly, his hands folded in his lap. Like the others, he sits and stares, sits and stares, my father walks to him, placing a hand on his shoulder

"Hi dad!" he says with a pretense of jovialness, but I know it's not genuine. It's hard for me to pretend to be cheery, I've never been good at faking emotions so I say nothing, instead, I look at the wooden table that we all sit at, I put the cake down on it. My dad tries to make conversation, but my grandfather is so far gone he doesn't recognize either of us anymore; he held onto my dad's memory a long time, and of his grandchildren, I was the last to be forgotten. A disease as addled his mind, he lives half in the past, half in the present, and sometimes barely at all. He's getting worse day by day, he's hardly aware of his surroundings now, at least he's past the point of knowing what's happening to him; He doesn't need to suffer the indignations, I know that if he could see himself like this, he wouldn't have wanted to live at all. At least that's what we tell ourselves, it's the only salvation from a biting depression that weighs on your shoulders and threatens to break the supports beneath you. That, and finding a dark humour in his forgetfulness to laugh in the face of a prolonged death to bring some kind of light to an otherwise vacuous, dark pit. It's hard to find such closure though, when you think of a man who gave his childhood to fight in two wars, to live and survive only to have his remaining years snatched from his fingers too early, this farce of a life is hardly living and seeing the shell of my grandfather brings only sadness and pain.

He was a strong man, even when he turned 80 he held so much power in his hands. He was an emotional anchor, a man's man, and I always admired him greatly. I could never express these feelings, when I realized I should it was too late, and I can only hope that he knew what I felt before he was taken from us before he even died. He was a soldier, and sometimes he acts as though he's still in World War II, asking if I am off to the front lines, his eyes looking at my shaved head critically as if inspecting to see if each hair was the same length as all the others. I hold back tears that make my eyes look like broken glass. I haven't cried in so long, I'm not about to start now. I can't bring myself to cry, it doesn't seem right, knowing that I'm mourning a death that hasn't occurred yet, not physically anyway. But the man I called grandpa is no longer living within him, that crucial piece that makes him who he is has ceased to exist. Times like these we need reminders to let ourselves know that we are still capable of feeling, suffering through a family members ailments, when serious enough, cause you to become numb, to shut that part of your brain off and forget when you're not in his presence, it's the only way you can make it through the days taking one step after another knowing we're all dying minute atfer minute. When I look at my grandfather as he sits there, his head slumped, drool forming at the corner of his mouth, and the stabbing sharpness in my chest and the tears I can't wipe away remind me of just how deep feelings can run.