No Memories of Present
Author’s note: I recently discovered this piece that I had written in 1993, my junior year of high school. It brought back so many feelings that I had forgotten experiencing during that time. I did a little bit of clean up, but left it mostly unchanged. I didn’t want to lose the voice of my 16 year old self. It’s like a time capsule for my life.
My grandfather struggled to rise from his favorite chair.
“Can I help you, Grove?” my grandmother’s thickly accented voice called.
“No.” He heaved his bulky form upward, groaning a bit and panting with the exertion. Open heart surgery following his heart attack years ago didn’t stifle his affection for potato chips- the kind that came in the big box rather than a bag. His swollen ankles are visible. His pants are too short. That’s how he likes them. “I’ve got to go to the store. Can you stay here and watch Amma?”
Amma, the Icelandic word for Grandmother, is one of the few Icelandic words that my grandfather has picked up during their decades of marriage. Afi, or grandfather, is one of the others. His question was directed toward me. I nodded. “Sure.”
The twinkle in my grandfather’s eye traveled to his dog. He stooped to pet her and the tip of her long tail wagged in loving approval. He pulled his large key ring from his pocket and checked for his wallet. I watched the door close behind him and moments later heard the car leave the garage and creep down the gravel driveway. Immediately, the questions started.
“Where’s Grove?” my grandmother asked.
“He went to the store,” I replied.
“When will he be back?”
Here it goes, I thought. I slumped my sixteen-year-old skin and bones into the big blue armchair and reached for the remote. “He’ll be home pretty soon,” I said.
I took in the cluttered living room. Nothing had been thrown out in years. My eyes landed on the stove in the kitchen. Three of the knobs had been removed, yet the one remaining was turned on. I jumped out of the chair and switched it off. He needs to check things more often, I thought with exasperation. I wandered back to the chair. My grandmother followed.
“Where’s Grove?” she asked.
“At the store,” I replied once more with a sigh, trying not to roll my eyes.
“Oh,” she said. “When will he be back?”
“Soon,” I said curtly.
My thoughts meandered back to when I was a little girl. We would visit my grandparents in their cozy little house in Herkimer. Amma was the ideal grandmother. She read us stories and gave us snacks and exclaimed at how much we grew. Her house often smelled of canned boiled fish balls- standard fare for one born and raised in Iceland. She’d had two sisters, but one died at the age of six from Strep throat. Her father ran the largest steamship company in Iceland, which made them a wealthy and well-known family in Reykjavik, but he died young, and the family’s social and economic status diminished with his loss.
In her early adolescent years, my grandmother suffered from polio. She became paralyzed and was never expected to walk again. Miraculously, she recovered and became the number one seeded women’s tennis player in Iceland, or so the story goes. She was also an avid skier, which landed her on the cover of an American magazine. She became a pharmacist, quite an accomplishment for women of her time.
During World War II, my grandfather was stationed in Iceland. His base was located next to some tennis courts. One afternoon, he climbed onto the roof of a building to peer over the wall that blocked the view of the courts. My grandmother was there, waiting for her beau to join her. My grandfather scaled the wall and introduced himself. He proposed not long after. They were married in Alabama, after she immigrated to the States and they settled in Herkimer, the small city in Central New York where he’d grown up. Articles ran in the local newspapers, and even a few national ones, telling of their storybook romance. They started a family, shared their passion for the outdoors with their children, spent summer vacation in Maine, and many adventures in the Adirondacks. She never returned to Iceland.
Years later, when my mother got a full-time job after having my sister and me, my grandparents moved into an apartment attached to our house, a mutually beneficial arrangement. Someone would be there when we came home from school and they had a place to grow old with the family next door. This worked well until the disease took hold. After a few years, my sister and I were old enough to care for ourselves. Amma couldn’t understand that. We needed to learn how to be independent. She wouldn’t let us walk down the street without an adult. We would tell her where we were going and she would forget and make my grandfather go looking for us. She forgot telephone messages and where she put things she needed. She forgot how to cook. It progressed. Now she repeats the same questions and never realizes it. She gets angry at the people around her. She believes that she still knows everything and that everyone else is wrong. Fortunately, she doesn’t get violent, she gets snitty, instead.
It is now to the point where she refuses to bathe, get her hair cut, or change her clothes. She forgets that she has children and grandchildren. The only people she remembers are those she sees frequently. She does remember some things from her childhood like her father, and how to speak her native Icelandic tongue.
Alzheimer’s disease strips a person of their ability to reason. As hard as it may be on the victim, it is equally as hard on the family that is forced to watch the disintegration of someone they love. Guilt and frustration come from the caretakers as they inevitably lose patience with the constant repetitive dialogue.
My grandmother is tapping my shoulder. “You have such beautiful hair, love,” she says. I thank her and smile. She was always full of compliments, before and now. Tears came to my eyes.
“Where’s Grove?” she asked.