My Grandmother’s Name

My grandmother’s name was the last thing, the only thing she remembered after the dementia was done with her. Even when she forgot her children, both dead and alive, forgot where she was, her name clung onto her memory in desperation. This, long after she couldn’t tell what day it was, when she spoke to my dead grandfather and her absentee sisters and the children she lost as if they still lived.

But now, even her name has been lost in the labyrinth of her mind. It didn’t last; the memory of the name her father gave her; a man she holds decades’ worth of grudges against. When her memory began to fade, when her mind began playing cruel games on her, it was her childhood memories that came to life, angry memories that spewed out in streams of bitterness.

“He was a terrible man, my father. He beat up my mother every day for not birthing him sons. Did I tell you that he refused to educate me? Did I tell you how he used to make us walk for kilometers on Sundays to get his cows fodder?” She asked repeatedly.

Today, as she sits on the edge of a red chair outside her kitchen clutching onto its wooden arms so tightly as if afraid to fall off, she looks to me like a desolate child. As she looks at me, eyes sad and sunken, I touch the soft grey hair peeking outside her headgear. I place my hand behind her neck and clean her ears. She is small and frail beneath my hand. My heart shifts heavily inside my chest.

“Shosho, why do you look angry?” I ask, staring at her skin, now lined with wrinkles and folds.

“I have no peace,” she answers immediately.

She starts to talk, words tumbling out of her mouth in confusion. She makes no sense. I listen still. I have more questions she can’t answer. When did you get so old shosho? When did you get so small? When did your back bend so that you fold into yourself when you sit? When did your voice start trembling, your words hiding in your throat and your chest so that you speak in whispers? When did your hands start shaking when you talk? When did you forget our names and yours and start talking of the dead like they still live?

I think about her a lot. I ask myself what memories of my childhood, my youth will remain with me in my old age. Will I still be a ball of sunshine, cheery and bursting with joy? What will I remember of my Dad, so kind and gentle, always giving to others? Of my mother, vivacious, the life of the party?

A friend of mine, whose mother died more than three decades ago says this of her “She was kind, of a golden heart, generous. And these things I remember of her are not colored by mere find memories, it is the unvarnished truth”.

What unvarnished truths will stay when our present becomes distant memories? What will we cling to?

What will I hold against my sisters, my friends and the people I meet?

All this will be determined by how I relate with them now. What you remember in 5o years will be shaped by how you live now: how you love; what you hold on to and let go of. It will be shaped by whether you forgive others and yourself.

When the sun begins to set on my life, I want to reminisce on my life with love and joy and a smile on my face.

Most of all, I want to remember how to laugh boisterously, and I hope to God I won’t remember how my parents didn’t buy me a bike growing up. I know how petty I can be.

Little Miss Sunshine