My Grandma Of The Old Folks ' Home

My great-grandmother was the matriarch of my family. When I was in seventh grade, around thirteen years old, she passed away due to breast cancer. This misfortune created an extremely difficult time for me because, not only was I adjusting to the environment of junior high, but many other issues were occurring in my life; this was the third death that I was having to deal with. Unfortunately, one of the previous deaths (that I was still trying to hurdle through and come to terms with), had occurred almost exactly a year before the passing of my great-grandmother. The second death that I had gone through occurred only one or two months before my great-grandma has passed. All of this turmoil created numerous internal conflicts for me, but also taught me a key lesson to keep note of, for the rest of my life.

The parents came out of Grandma’s room by one by one, bags under their eyes, makeup running down their face, and bright red noses. By that time, I could almost predict what happened. As my mom and dad approached us with their heads down, I prepared myself to hear exactly what I never wanted to hear. “The doctors are turning off the life support machine. She isn’t suffering anymore, and she will be looking over every one of you guys. She said she loves you all so much,” Mom told us while my dad didn’t hide his tears back.

That day when I returned home from school, my mom’s boyfriend called me asking to speak to my grandmother. Typically, Gus would call my grandmother himself if he wanted to speak with her, which was rare. I found out about my mom going to the hospital from my grandmother after that phone call. The doctor told my family that a stroke afflicted her in the middle of the day. My mom confused the date with her birthday, had trouble getting words out and remembering our family member’s names. The nurse had to take her for walks periodically and exercise her legs and arms because they were weak. Seeing my mother in this condition made me appreciate my mother and everything she does for me tremendously. However, I was terrified for my mother’s health.

My grandma was my superhero with her genial personality and her ability to give you her full, undivided attention in order to listen to whatever you had to say. It was always my dream to be able to share both my high school and college graduation with both my parents and grandma and being able to later pay them all back for all their sacrifices. Towards the beginning of my sixth-grade year my grandma became unexpectedly sick and as months passed her health slowly began to deteriorate until she fell into a vegetative comatose for the next four years. My grandma’s sudden illness came as an unexpected surprise which leads to my mom and her family having to take turns in order to care for my grandma throughout her extensive hospital visits and inhome medical care. Throughout those four years both my emotional and mental health took a hit as I tried my best to learn how to deal with her sudden illness and the fact that my mom was rarely home because she was either in the hospital or at my grandma’s house in order to help take care of

I remember the days when my grandma would be the one taking care of me after school. Each and every school day, I would eagerly wait for school to end so that my grandma could come and pick me up to bring me back to her apartment. Each and every day, she would come 15 minutes after school had ended to avoid the hassle of dealing with all the parents coming at the same time to pick their kids up. I didn’t mind though, that gave me time to talk to my teachers about issues that I had or just to socialize with my friends. Once my grandma arrived, I would quickly drop what I was doing, say goodbye to whomever I was talking to, and go straight to the car to keep my grandma from waiting. My grandma would immediately greet me and ask how my day

My grandma Linda was her only daughter. I spent weeks at Ma’s house in Holstein, Iowa. Christmas for the Grell’s was always hosted at Ma’s house. When I was young she would take me swimming at the communities pool, and ice cream afterwards. Ma’ was an expert cook, her favorite summer dish was fried chicken. She was nearly famous for that fried chicken. In September of 2012 Doctors discovered a tumor in Ma’s liver. Ma’s children paid for an assisted living home in Sioux City, Iowa. She pasted away March 21, 2013. Leading up to March the relationship between my mother and her parents decrepitated. My grandparents refused to come to my high school graduation.

It’s August 28th, 2015 I had just moved to Grand Valley State University two days ago. Its 6:15am. My cell phone is ringing. It was my brother and I thought it was too early for him to be calling me, so I sent his call to voicemail, it rang again, I thought to myself, “Why on earth is he calling me at 6:15 in the morning it’s too early for this”, So I finally decided to answer the call and I got the news that my grandma passed away. It wasn’t totally unexpected, she was on hospice care an entire week before I left for college and I’ve watched her slowly deteriorate because of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, and dementia.

This was my third session with LD since grandma’s death. She appears to be more comfortable in talking about grandma’s death. In previous sessions, she was “bothered by grandma’s old school ways”, now I believe she is struggling with her love for grandma, opposed to her disgust with the “old Haitian ways” I knew she loved her grandmother, and we were in the process of learning to identify grandma’s old school ways and applying it to LD’s generation, to see the similarities and differences. I sympathized with LD, to lose a grandma at any age is tough. Everyone handles death and dying differently, the key for me is to listen to LD, allow her to express her feelings and to seek support when she needs it from the staff at school, and with members of her family who will comfort her when she needs to be

As usual the relatives were happy to see my family and I, and after seeing everybody and hanging around inside for a little bit. My grandmother stayed inside with my mother too cook, and the rest of us transitioned into my backyard where I had another enjoyable experience. There was a rope in my backyard, and this rope was a modern day iPhone. I would swing on this rope for countless hours day after day having the time of my life. This time it was different however, because I had my relatives there, and they would push me on it propelling me even further up making the experience of swinging on this rope even more enjoyable. Out of all the moments that day this is the one that I can remember the most

When I was younger, I grew up with four grandparents who I could spend time with. As I started to grow older, my grandparents started to deteriorate. My grandmother developed Alzheimer’s, and more specifically dementia. I remember one day at my beach house when I was talking to her, she asked me who I was because she couldn’t remember. She didn’t remember her own grandson. She started to lose all her memory and she had difficulty hearing and speaking. It got to a point where there was no way of communicating with her, and we wondered if she even knew who her own family was. She went through this deterioration for upwards of 5 years, and I it got to a point where I forgot what she was like before she developed the mental disease. I would watch

The following months a winter, cold and gloomy, surrounded the house. My grandmother came to stay with us since my father had fallen into depression and needed help taking care of my sister and I. When my grandmother went grocery shopping my sister would struggle with homework without my grandmother’s help. One day when my grandmother left to go grocery shopping my sister approached me, which was unusual of her since its very rare for her to come to me. Her dark brown hair and big eyes reminded me of my self when I was younger. “I’m hungry” she complained, a question she’s never asked me. My father sleeping and my grandmother away, I was the only one left to take care of her and that terrified me. I had never cared for or known how to care for someone else. All I knew was how to evaluate whether or not someone was caring for another correctly.

My grandma had survived a hard life, and yet managed to raise four responsible, well-educated, and successful children. All this she did while working as a respected psychiatric nurse and a state mental health board member. Although she had had and was still overcoming trials in life, I always knew she would be there and cared about me and my life. As my brother and I grew older and were unable to visit my grandparents as often as we

On January 5, 2009 my father pasted away. He and I did not have the typical father-son relationship; we did not have a relationship at all. I presumed that it would have a little if any affect on me. However, as the semester continued, it seemed to get worse. Besides my father’s passing, several weeks later my grandmother was diagnosed with dementia. It was difficult for me to deal with, but it was more difficult for my mother to handle.

June 11, 2015. It was a regular summer day, or so I thought. Only five days until my fifteenth birthday and I was super excited. My mom had taken the morning off from work to take my grandmother to the doctors. She was going for her regular heart check-up appointment. As we always did, my mother and I drove that morning over to the nursing home in St. Matthews, South Carolina. My mother had recently entered my grandmother into the nursing home because my mom needed to start working more and could not fulfill the obligations of taking care of my grandmother like she normally would. When we got to the nursing home, we parked the car under the awning which was in the front of the nursing and covered a little walkway where people loaded their family members. I got out first and headed back to the room as my mom followed closely behind. When I walked into the room, I saw my sweet loving grandmother sitting there. As always, my beautiful grandmother, with her white hair, her green eyes, her frail but beautiful skin, and her smile glistened as she awaited her day out. My grandmother did not get out much so even going to the doctors was a good day out for her. We helped her into her wheelchair, a normal struggle for my mother and I, and we rolled her down the hallway to the car. We loaded her into the car, another struggle, and we headed off to Orangeburg which was where the doctors office was. While riding to the doctor's office my grandmother mentioned that her hands looked green

Some of the many memories I carry with me every day of my grandmother are the holidays when we used to get together. I remember Thanksgiving and Easter most of all. On Thanksgiving the entire family would come together for dinner and then we would all stay at her house for the night. I remember this so well because we would wake up the next morning to the smell of breakfast and all the ladies would be gone shopping to the "After Thanksgiving Sale".