Grandfather story
Apr. 18th, 2004 11:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jwghMy grandfather told me this story from when he was living in Port Washington.
He was in a glee club there, and for one concert they had prepared a song which began with a piano accompaniament, then had a long a capella section, and then had another section with piano.
The night of the performance, they began singing the piece and during the a capella section they noticed the conductor was looking more and more nervous as they got closer and closer to the point at which the piano would join in. Finally, they reached that point, the pianist started playing, and the conductor looked very relieved and blew him a kiss.
It had turned out that during the a capella section the singers had gradually gone flat, but that the pianist had detected this and on starting up again played his part transposed a half-tone, bringing him into tune with what the singers were singing at that point.
My grandfather told me this story on Saturday when I visited him for the first time at his retirement home, which is a home specifically for people with Alzheimer's. He's suffered from this for a few years, but it was only a few months ago that my grandmother decided that she was no longer capable of taking care of him and put him in the home. (She was hoping to postpone this another six months, but it just wasn't doable.)
It's hard to tell exactly when the Alzheimer's started, as he's a smart guy and was good at covering for himself -- if someone asked him a question and he wasn't sure what they were talking about, for instance, he would say with a smile, "I leave that entirely up to you." Also, he had been going deaf for ten or twenty years, so it was easy to ascribe some confusion to that.
When I visited him and my grandmother last year, though, it was obvious that he was having problems with his memory; he would tell an anecdote and then tell it again a couple of minutes later, and when the conversation turned to his aunt Carol he kept asking me if I knew that she had written wonderful children's books.
I think it must have been very difficult for him. He always used to do a lot of crossword puzzles and read a lot, but I don't think either activity is really possible for him (he'll forget what he's reading about). He appears to spend a lot of time singing and playing the harmonica, which he enjoys. (He told me the story that opens this entry after singing a couple of songs.)
One of my aunts told me that she thinks he doesn't really have any clear memories of any events that have taken place in the past fifty years. (That's when he lived in Port Washington.) That's pretty amazing if true; if I live to be as old as he is and if I am similarly afflicted then that would mean I wouldn't be able to remember anything after just about right now. (Of course this is a distinct possibility.)
He does remember people, though, especially family members. At one point I said to him (note that I was trying to front-load as much information into what I was saying as possible), "I talked to my sister Charlotte the other day. Her son Ezra just turned six months old and he's started crawling!" And he responded, "Oh, how nice! ... His name is Ezra Benjamin, is it?" Which it is.
He seems pretty well-adjusted now, although I guess for the first month or so after he moved in he was very angry and when my grandmother tried to visit him he would throw things, which is a bit shocking -- he's always been fit but tended to use a very thought-out approach to problems (or at least that's how I'd always seen him). I think a lot of the time he doesn't quite understand where he is or why but he seems to accept it, at least outwardly. I'm glad this is so.
He appeared to have some kind of skin condition on his face -- perhaps a reaction to some medication he's on? I don't know -- but I didn't want to remind him of it if he had forgotten. I tried very hard not to vex him in any way. I'm not sure why this was so important to me. I think maybe because I felt on some level that when all you can remember is the things that have happened in the past ten or fifteen minutes, then if you were unhappy for five of those minutes, then that's like being sad for half or a third of your life. I wouldn't want to be responsible for something like that.
Anyway, I was glad to see him again, and he seemed happy to see me, so that was nice.
I'm wondering if I should get a new harmonica for him, as the one he has seems to be a bit beat up. I will ask Chris where he thinks a good place to get something like that would be.
He was in a glee club there, and for one concert they had prepared a song which began with a piano accompaniament, then had a long a capella section, and then had another section with piano.
The night of the performance, they began singing the piece and during the a capella section they noticed the conductor was looking more and more nervous as they got closer and closer to the point at which the piano would join in. Finally, they reached that point, the pianist started playing, and the conductor looked very relieved and blew him a kiss.
It had turned out that during the a capella section the singers had gradually gone flat, but that the pianist had detected this and on starting up again played his part transposed a half-tone, bringing him into tune with what the singers were singing at that point.
My grandfather told me this story on Saturday when I visited him for the first time at his retirement home, which is a home specifically for people with Alzheimer's. He's suffered from this for a few years, but it was only a few months ago that my grandmother decided that she was no longer capable of taking care of him and put him in the home. (She was hoping to postpone this another six months, but it just wasn't doable.)
It's hard to tell exactly when the Alzheimer's started, as he's a smart guy and was good at covering for himself -- if someone asked him a question and he wasn't sure what they were talking about, for instance, he would say with a smile, "I leave that entirely up to you." Also, he had been going deaf for ten or twenty years, so it was easy to ascribe some confusion to that.
When I visited him and my grandmother last year, though, it was obvious that he was having problems with his memory; he would tell an anecdote and then tell it again a couple of minutes later, and when the conversation turned to his aunt Carol he kept asking me if I knew that she had written wonderful children's books.
I think it must have been very difficult for him. He always used to do a lot of crossword puzzles and read a lot, but I don't think either activity is really possible for him (he'll forget what he's reading about). He appears to spend a lot of time singing and playing the harmonica, which he enjoys. (He told me the story that opens this entry after singing a couple of songs.)
One of my aunts told me that she thinks he doesn't really have any clear memories of any events that have taken place in the past fifty years. (That's when he lived in Port Washington.) That's pretty amazing if true; if I live to be as old as he is and if I am similarly afflicted then that would mean I wouldn't be able to remember anything after just about right now. (Of course this is a distinct possibility.)
He does remember people, though, especially family members. At one point I said to him (note that I was trying to front-load as much information into what I was saying as possible), "I talked to my sister Charlotte the other day. Her son Ezra just turned six months old and he's started crawling!" And he responded, "Oh, how nice! ... His name is Ezra Benjamin, is it?" Which it is.
He seems pretty well-adjusted now, although I guess for the first month or so after he moved in he was very angry and when my grandmother tried to visit him he would throw things, which is a bit shocking -- he's always been fit but tended to use a very thought-out approach to problems (or at least that's how I'd always seen him). I think a lot of the time he doesn't quite understand where he is or why but he seems to accept it, at least outwardly. I'm glad this is so.
He appeared to have some kind of skin condition on his face -- perhaps a reaction to some medication he's on? I don't know -- but I didn't want to remind him of it if he had forgotten. I tried very hard not to vex him in any way. I'm not sure why this was so important to me. I think maybe because I felt on some level that when all you can remember is the things that have happened in the past ten or fifteen minutes, then if you were unhappy for five of those minutes, then that's like being sad for half or a third of your life. I wouldn't want to be responsible for something like that.
Anyway, I was glad to see him again, and he seemed happy to see me, so that was nice.
I'm wondering if I should get a new harmonica for him, as the one he has seems to be a bit beat up. I will ask Chris where he thinks a good place to get something like that would be.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-04-18 09:20 pm (UTC)I'm sorry your grandfather's going through this. He sounds like a really cool guy.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-18 09:43 pm (UTC)I found after a point, with my mother, trying to "place" people and remind her of names and facts became upsetting to her. Alzheimers patients reach a stage where there aren't many points of reference left and all you can do is be there with them in the moment. For awhile my mother was never sure who I was, and often seemed to think I was her sister. Didn't matter - I'd just hang out, sometimes I brought her outside in a wheelchair and let her look at the trees and stuff.
I think one of the tricky things about conditions like this and Parkinson's is you lose the normal relationship with your body. Your grandfather might not know or care he has a skin condition. However, you can and should ask the staff if he's been seen and is being looked after. I noticed that in general, people with alert relatives in such places are better looked after - not that the staff are deliberately negligent, but there's just a normal tendency to be a little more careful with people who have a family presence than those who don't.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-19 08:43 am (UTC)Maybe the next time I talk to one of my aunts I will ask about the skin condition. The one who leaves near where he is living is a doctor so maybe she would be a good person to ask.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-19 07:26 am (UTC)My wife and I moved in with her grandfather Marty in 2002; he'd been living on his own for over a year after his wife died, in the house he'd owned since 1946, and didn't want to move out, and he and the family agreed it'd be good to have someone living there with him. We got along well, and one of my major concerns -- that a man in his mid 80s would have trouble coping with having a 3-year-old around -- turned out not to be a problem. (Kenny had more trouble coping with having his great grandfather around, actually.)
We kept our own house (half a mile up the road) for several months in case we needed to move back, but by spring we decided things were working out well enough that we didn't need an escape hatch, so we sold the house.
He was having occasional problems with short term memory but mostly seemed pretty focused. Over the winter once in a while he'd have some sort of delusional episode which usually happened soon after waking and which looked to me like he was having trouble distinguishing a dream he'd had from reality. Those episodes were markedly fewer by spring.
And then in late summer he started spiralling downhill rapidly. Forgetfulness, delusions, changes in personality and behavior, the whole thing. The intelligent, funny, kind old man was disappearing before our eyes and some of what he was being replaced by was not someone we wanted our son to be around.
The family said they he was still not going to move out, so we decided we had to. Shortly after we signed off on the home inspection for the house we were buying, the family changed its collective mind. That was aggravating, because if we'd known Marty was going to move out we could have stayed there and taken our time finding a new place to live; not that we don't like the place we found, but something a little closer to Syracuse would have been nice. But part of it simply was that in those few weeks his condition had deteriorated that much more, and the family realized he just could not be cared for adequately in that house. "He doesn't have good days any more; he has good hours" was one family member's observation. He ended up moving out before we did, in fact.
He's not particularly happy, I think, in the assisted living apartment, but he's slowly adjusting.
It blows, it really does. The saddest thing was to see him being aware of his own mind's deterioration. His daughter tells us if she ever starts getting that way she's going to go kayaking down the rapids without a helmet. I just hope it never happens to me.