Project 1 Revised

She was a very strong woman in her time. She bore 12 children and was married to a very powerful politician who passed away at a young age. She was the best roti maker ever and I have seen the mystical patterns that she made using crochet hooks and yarn. I have heard stories about her great strength, her renowned recipes, and her card playing strategies; but I have never tasted the chief’s hand or seen the great card shark in action. My Grandmother suffered the last decade of her life with Alzheimer’s. She spent one of the most difficult parts of her life living with my two younger siblings, my parents and myself.
My Grandmother was born in Grenada, moved to Trinidad and finally years later began a new life in Florida. My family at the time lived in South Carolina but visited Gran’s house every summer. I remember finding out that she was coming to live with us so we had some renovations done to the house and designed a master bedroom for her comfort. As a few months went by her memory began to deteriorate. We were slowly losing the one we cherished. The doctors thought it would be best if we took her back to where she was most familiar. So that summer we moved into her house in Florida.
Alzheimer’s changed the person we once knew. Gran became a different person we had to do everything for her: feed her, bathe her, and dress her. She developed an aggressive behavior courtesy of the mind erasing disease. One thing about my Grandmother is that she always loved to dress up. Everything had to be perfect, the wardrobe, hair, nails, shoes and pocketbook to match. Despite her forgetting she was hungry or our names she never forgot how much she loved to dress up. I can remember every three days my sister and I would polish her nails a new color.

A few years past and my Grandmother’s eldest daughter decided that she wanted to take care of Gran, so she took her away. This meant that she only got her nails polished on weekends. One weekend we went to get her but she wasn’t there. My Aunt explained that she put my Grandmother in a nursing home: my Dad’s biggest fear. Since my Aunt had power of attorney there was nothing we could have done about it. Now Gran’s nails were twice a month because my Aunt wanted to take her on weekends too and the home only allowed patients to be dismissed on weekends.

As I got older we got to see our Grandmother less due to her immobility and my Aunt insisting my Grandmother being moved to different homes further away from us. Unfortunately we made too many excuses not to go see the new Gran and before we knew it my Grandmother developed a urinary tract infection. She was hospitalized for a few days and then transferred to Hospice. I spent my 14th birthday in Hospice with her praying she wouldn’t die or at least she wouldn’t be in any pain since should lost her ability to speak.
March 20th 2004 the day after my birthday Gran passed away just as we left Hospice that night. After that all I thought about was my Grandmother’s nails. They were not done in her favorite pink colored polish, they were not done to match the gowns she had to wear in Hospice, they were not done at all. I reflected and cried about all the times that I could have done Gran’s nails but always found something else to do. And at that second, that’s when I started to believe that you cannot take the moments you have with people for granted, eventually we all have to go and I never want to be in the same position that I was in with my Grandmother, regretting the fact that I didn’t take that extra five minutes out of the 1,440 minutes of the day to polish ten finger nails. You never can tell when your last moment with that one person may be so, cherish the time you have with those you love and this I believe.