Old ladies and grumpy men...

My grandmother was very old today.

She's doing well...better than I expected. As a matter of fact, she was prancing around the hospital room like she'd never uttered the words, 'can you believing I suffer so much?' Just, after my uncle left, she sat down, held my hand and we both knew that she was not the same and that she had decisions to make (although, sometimes after 10 minutes with my uncle, ~I~ don't feel the same and want to hold someone's hand).

She puts up so many appearances and, frankly, can get so ridiculous that I forget that she ~does~ understand. We didn't talk much, but I knew she'd been thinking about the rest of her life and the lives of her family after she's gone. And she was squeezing my hand tight. It's been a long time since I've felt as though she saw something in me she liked and trusted me enough to be honest. We discussed living arrangements for her when she gets home, we discussed the death of my grandfather 24 years ago, we discussed her needs and their impact on the family...but we didn't discuss any of those things for long because her aphasia (and probably just old age) affects her comprehension and ability to say what she wants to say. So she has to stop. It must be a drag.

Anyway...she's healthy as a horse, she just has a bum knee now. So that's good news ('cept for the knee) and I'll knock wood.

Whoa! Dude...4 posts on my family and all my grandmother's got is arthritis? Enough of that.