Slowly Slipping.

It's my grandma.  Sometimes she knows me by name and sometimes she calls me Jennifer or Eric.  She seems to understand who I am when I tell her my name but I know that it will slip away completely someday.

Yesterday she knew who I was by name.  I shared a box of her pictures with her.  She saw pictures of my grandpa, the guy she refers to as "my husband" but that she doesn't remember at all.  She knows who he is because others have told her but she doesn't really know and replies "ain't that crazy?!"

"The brain works in strange ways."  "You had a brain tumor removed and some of the memories were lost."  "You had chemotherapy and radiation.  That does strange things to your memories."  Then she asks again, and again, and again 2 minutes later.

I think about her sitting alone and having these partial memories in her head that taunt her by being almost there but just outside her grasp.  She does crosswords and Bent & Wiggly puzzles but does little else.  She can't hear well so doesn't watch TV or participate in activities that are available to her.  I worry that she gets trapped in the almost-memories and that it hurts so much to not know where they have gone or if they will ever come back.

After spending an hour and a half with her yesterday during which time she kept mentioning her daughter, my mom, and asking for her name.  "Char", I said as odd as it is to repeatedly refer to your own mother by her first name.  She asked me if her daughter had any children.  "Yes, me (pause so she could take that in) and Jeremy."  "You're Char's daughter?"  Yes, grandma, yes.  It clicked and it came back to her but I know one day it won't.

"I get so confused", she says.  I know, grandma.