Spoiler! :
When I was eleven or twelve, my great-grandmother suffered a terrible fall and she was hospitalized for a period of time. Eventually, doctors concluded that she - 'M' as we called her - now had dementia. At the age I was, I didn't fully understand what that meant besides memory loss. I was unaware of everything else it was and could be.
My mum and I went down to visit when we received the news. The plan was we'd stay in a bed-and-breakfast near to the retirement home where resided my great-grandfather, J. He would take us to see M, upon his insistence and much debating with my mother.
Grandpa J always had been a strong, healthy man despite his age (mid-nineties). Daily, he wrote crosswords and finished word-searches from the newspapers he was subscribed. Also, upon arrival at the retirement home, he considered rekindling his love for the game of bridge. In my eyes, Grandpa J was the prime example of a man who was living life to its fullest.
After a satisfying lunch of fish and chips, Grandpa J called a taxi and we were driven to the nursing home M had been recently admitted to. It was a plain bluish grey building with a roundabout driveway. The door couldn't be opened without a code. I saw this place more as a prison rather than as a private hospital.
The elevator had to be taken up to the third floor. It was diseased with the common hospital stench of ammonia and bleach. Nurses in cream, white, grey, blue bustled around, barely making a sound against the shining tiled floor. Everything was painted uniform shades of beige and periwinkles. It was perhaps the most depressing place I'd ever stepped foot in.
When I saw M, she was no longer the proper, jubilant lady she had been for the eleven-twelve years I had known her. Contrarily, my healthy vision had been replaced with that of a frail and terribly thin old person, wizened beyond years. She didn't touch the minute snack of two grapes and juice before her - today she relived a life back on the prairie. Maybe tomorrow she'd be seventy, playing bridge with the members of the Country Club.
M was long gone.
I held her hand delicately as I had been told, but I was away in another world. I only observed.
There was a moment when my eyes strayed over across M where Grandpa J was sitting, her husband of some seventy-eight years. He grasped her other free hand between his two. His lips moved as he whispered confessions of love to his sweetheart. M gazed at him with unconditional adoration - she remembered him. Grandpa J stopped looking for just a moment and as he smiled sadly, the silent tears began to fall, drops of glass, down his cheeks. He kissed M's cheek and she leaned into it.
Despite my juvenile age, I recognized something in my great-grandfather right then. He was still a proud man, alive in every way, but he was in no way invincible, or cold to emotion. It was, I decided subconsciously, an admirable weakness. I was shown that very bittersweet day that my great-grandfather was only still human. He was always, at heart, the youthful eighteen-year-old boy who had fallen for this woman.
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