Grandparents

I was thinking about my grandparents last night. Thinking about how they were when I was a little girl. These days they aren't the same people. My grandma has Alzheimer's and my grandpa has a lot of pain from different things and spends a lot of time medicating himself. He's also not the same since having to take care of my grandma who's mind is slowly fading.

I remember when I was little and I used to spend time with them on the weekends or in the summer. My grandpa always had a garden and I loved to help him with it. We would pick green beans and then break and string them. We also picked tomatoes and cucumbers. The best part of helping was of course getting to eat the fresh vegetables. To this day I love a good tomato or cucumber fresh from the garden. There is nothing that compares to that taste. My grandpa always had a big garden and he teased me every year about helping him pull the weeds.

My grandma was never very outdoorsy, but she did always cook us good meals. I was never going to go hungry under her watch. If we weren't eating meals we were eating snacks like trail Bologna and crackers. I miss eating my grandma's meals. It's been a lot of years since she was able to cook. It's funny because every person that cooks makes things taste differently. No two people can cook the same thing and have it taste exactly the same.

I also remember that when I was a little girl my grandma would stay home from church on Sunday nights so that I didn't have to go and sit through the service. My big sister would go to church with my grandpa and me and grandma would bake cinnamon biscuits. We would have them coming out of the oven when my grandpa got home. They were always the best tasting biscuits, especially hot out of the oven with butter and cinnamon baked right into them.

My grandma and I have a lot of things in common. One of those things being the ability to talk! We can also talk to anybody. I caught myself in a store one time making conversation with the sales clerk and realized that I'm just like my grandma! Grandma and I used to lay awake in bed at night and talk about everything. They were religious whereas my parents were not so I would lay awake and ask her questions about God and heaven. My grandma would always joke that I would be talking and then suddenly there would be silence and she knew that I had finally fallen asleep.

It's sad these days because I can't talk to grandma anymore. I try, but questions confuse and embarrass her. She likes to tell you the same things over and over, because they are all she can remember at the time. I miss my grandma. She's still here, and yet she isn't. It's hard to see a women always so full of faith, and always such a good person, suffering. I can't imagine being my grandpa. He married her when she was a teenager and they've been together ever since. Can you imagine knowing someone for almost all of your life and then watching their mind slowly go? It has to be very lonely and sad. I still love grandma, I just miss the way she used to be.