Weighing Heavy

It’s been a long time since I’ve made a post, so I’m sorry. I feel overwhelmingly busy with my day to day life, and haven’t made time to sit and write.  It’s naptime at the Oswald’s and David is at the gym. My heart is weighing heavy on one particular subject, so I thought what the hay, might as well get back to it.  My mom’s mom, my grandma Diane Kopsa recently moved into assisted living at Bickford Cottage near my mom’s work. It’s interesting how when you look back on a change you thought happened out of nowhere, you then realize it was really happening right before your eyes, slowly, but surely. 

To set the scene, my grandpa Kopsa passed away in November 2006.  The last few years of his life were stressful and busy for my grandma as she was in charge of taking care of him. Bringing him to Dialysis every other day, along with any other doctor appointments he had, etc. and if anyone knew my grandparents, you knew they argued a lot. Haha, I can’t help but laugh about this subject because I have many memories of many instances where they were going back and forth. One that stays clear in my mind is of her yelling, “Oh Don, shut up” from the kitchen as he hollered at her from his recliner in the living room.  My grandpa was an ornery man, but we loved him and he was a great person who would do anything for his family.  My grandma is a sweet lady, and cares so much for all of us.  You would never hear her yell, unless it was at my grandpaJ She is the kind of woman who never leaves the house without makeup on, her hair fixed up and a nice outfit and purse to match. She LOVES to shop and you could say going out to eat is one of her favorite pastimes.  I think her ‘likes’ were just as well liked by her girls, as well as myself and my cousins.  She’s just a classy lady. 

I remember when she started to forget.  It was at the end of my grandpa’s life. I would express concern to my mom, and she would always say, “She has a lot going on with grandpa, and his health, so she’s just confused from all of that.” I wished that was the case, but after my grandpa’s passing, the confusion continued and worsened.  She was diagnosed with dementia some time back, and while that was a big let down to hear, I didn’t really let it bother me all that much. In the last couple of years I did begin to get concerned for her safety though.  Living at the house with only my Uncle Ron (who was gone a lot) I always wondered if she’d forget to shut the stove off or get into an accident driving in town. I didn’t see the same concern in my mom’s eyes, so I just let it be and figured she knew what her mother was and wasn’t capable of.  Lucky for us, nothing bad happened these last few years when the dementia started to really show its colors, and my grandma was living in her home in Grundy Center.  It was recently brought to my attention that she has now been diagnosed with moderate to sever Alzheimer’s.   That makes it much scarier for me to deal with.  Am I going to someday walk into Bickford to visit her, only to find that she doesn’t know who I am. She really enjoys Syrie’s company. I don’t know what it is about her, but she is always asking my mom about Syrie, so we try to get her over to see her great-grandma once a week especially now that she lives so close to us.  My eyes well up when I think that the day might come where she can’t remember Syrie’s name or recognize who she is. I hope it never gets to that point, but Alzheimer’s is a nasty disease, and you just never know.  Recently my mom and family have been talking about selling my grandma’s house.  They also talk about going through all of the stuff in the house that’s accumulated over the years my grandparents lived there.  I have no desire to go over there, and go through things, to see if there’s anything I can’t live without. To think that my grandma will never be in her kitchen, using her dishes to make Christmas dinner or her famous dumpling soup again breaks my heart.  To think that I’ll never open another gift from her wrapped by her favorite store, Von Maur (or Von Mars, as she called it) breaks my heart. To think that my mom can’t call her and ask her how she makes this or that recipe because as everyone knows, moms always make it best, breaks my heart.  She’s still a loving grandma and very much ‘with it’, but a lot of things aren’t the same.  When you look at her, in her eyes, she doesn’t look at you the same.  It’s hard for me to put into words what I mean, but I know some thing is different.  She is forgetful, repeats herself, and dang it she doesn’t have the same desire to go shopping or to make sure her face is on, as she calls it before going out…but she does still love to go out to eatJ  On a side note can I just say…getting old sucks.  The obstacles that come with getting older makes times hard and when Alzheimer’s is thrown into the mix, growing old can seem much more difficult.  Something I’ve taken from all of this is the fact that I know really need to embrace both of my grandmothers, and make more time and memories with them.  I hope all of you reading this will make a conscious effort to give more time to your loved ones who you maybe don’t see or think you have time for.