Rotten news
I just found out last night that my great-aunt is in very rough shape; she had a heart attack and then fell on the pavement, and ... well, I don't know all the details, but my dad let me know that she's in a coma, isn't coming out of it (i.e. ever) and probably won't make it more than a couple of days. All of this sucks. I've had to beg off on planning a party for John next week, since I have no idea when we'll have to be going back to Ontario, but it sure looks like it'll be next week sometime.
While I'm a bit shocked by the news, I would be hard-pressed to say that I'm crushed - in fact, relief would be much closer to the emotional state I'm feeling right now. My Aunt Villie was a very nice woman who had the bad luck to have to take care of her invalid husband for the last five years of his life, during which time he couldn't eat without her feeding him, and since they had no children, without anyone to take care of her. Then when he passed away in 1995, my great-aunt started to go - no, check that, did go insane. Not just in that sort of mild eccentric way that some old people get. She started having a lot of paranoid delusions, cutting herself off from friends she had had for 50 years or more, and also started living in her own filth. And the thing was, whenever anyone tried to clean her place, she would find things "missing" (i.e. she never had them, had discarded them or misplaced them) and accuse people of stealing them. And while she did have better days, and seemed to enjoy herself at my wedding, these were the exception, not the rule. So her cleaning lady basically stopped cleaning except in the most cursory way, and her friends stopped trying to help her organize her life. She (like many of my family) is a very stubborn woman, and as long as she could present the semblance of normalcy to the outside world, she refused any assistance - medical, psychiatric, social, hygienic, etc. There was no way out for her that would maintain her dignity, but she couldn't recognize that the way she was living was not dignified to begin with.
It's probably very wrong to speak ill of a woman who gave her community so very much over the years, and who is right now lying in a coma. But the way she has been for the past few years is not the way anyone wants to remember her, and seeing her just get crazier and crazier isn't good for me, and especially isn't good for my grandmother, who has been the family member closest to her for many years. I had long since given up hope that she would ever again be 'normal', and dreaded the possibility that she would spend another five or ten years in a slow slide, bringing the rest of my family around with her. So far, everyone she has offended has managed to understand and forgive her, at least outwardly. For her life to end suddenly, before this could get out of control, is a blessing not only to her but to the rest of us as well.
Do these thoughts make me an uncaring person? I certainly don't think so, and can't honestly apologize for them. All that is left now is the short wait before the end.
While I'm a bit shocked by the news, I would be hard-pressed to say that I'm crushed - in fact, relief would be much closer to the emotional state I'm feeling right now. My Aunt Villie was a very nice woman who had the bad luck to have to take care of her invalid husband for the last five years of his life, during which time he couldn't eat without her feeding him, and since they had no children, without anyone to take care of her. Then when he passed away in 1995, my great-aunt started to go - no, check that, did go insane. Not just in that sort of mild eccentric way that some old people get. She started having a lot of paranoid delusions, cutting herself off from friends she had had for 50 years or more, and also started living in her own filth. And the thing was, whenever anyone tried to clean her place, she would find things "missing" (i.e. she never had them, had discarded them or misplaced them) and accuse people of stealing them. And while she did have better days, and seemed to enjoy herself at my wedding, these were the exception, not the rule. So her cleaning lady basically stopped cleaning except in the most cursory way, and her friends stopped trying to help her organize her life. She (like many of my family) is a very stubborn woman, and as long as she could present the semblance of normalcy to the outside world, she refused any assistance - medical, psychiatric, social, hygienic, etc. There was no way out for her that would maintain her dignity, but she couldn't recognize that the way she was living was not dignified to begin with.
It's probably very wrong to speak ill of a woman who gave her community so very much over the years, and who is right now lying in a coma. But the way she has been for the past few years is not the way anyone wants to remember her, and seeing her just get crazier and crazier isn't good for me, and especially isn't good for my grandmother, who has been the family member closest to her for many years. I had long since given up hope that she would ever again be 'normal', and dreaded the possibility that she would spend another five or ten years in a slow slide, bringing the rest of my family around with her. So far, everyone she has offended has managed to understand and forgive her, at least outwardly. For her life to end suddenly, before this could get out of control, is a blessing not only to her but to the rest of us as well.
Do these thoughts make me an uncaring person? I certainly don't think so, and can't honestly apologize for them. All that is left now is the short wait before the end.