Commentary : Walking a Fine Line While Facing Inevitable: Old Age

My grandmother is planning a celebration soon. The actual date has not yet been determined, but it will be near her 86th birthday. She has decided to have a barbecue on her patio, with her family honoring the occasion of her birth. While she is consumed with the anticipation of the festivity, I am leery of its approach. I simply realize the difference between vision and possibility.

Nana’s ideals of family gatherings are both invigorated and debilitated by her memories of similar affairs from 30 years ago. They are brightened with remembrances of her physical agility and spacious home surroundings, of my grandfather’s vitality, and matriarchal homage. They do not recognize the undeniable changes, nor are they hindered with her languor or short-term memory lapses, the shadows of her aging. The task of fulfilling Nana’s birthday desires will fall upon me, the loving architect who must somehow design an equilibrium between her dreams and reality.

As the oldest of three grandchildren, I had persuaded my grandparents four years ago to move from their mobile home in Chino to Fredericka Manor, a respected retirement complex in Chula Vista. Their mobile home had provided manageability and economy for them in recent years, but there were signs of increasing deterioration, both in my grandparents’ health and their ability to attend to the needs of their home. Spurred by their falls and the deaths of several close friends, the timing seemed right to usher my grandparents into what will likely be their final phase of residency.

I assumed the task of organizing and executing the move. While Grandpa was relieved to be freed from the responsibility, Nana insisted on supervising, packing china dishes feebly in single layers of newspaper, not comprehending that her dining table and buffet cabinets had already been sold.

Since they had chosen a small cottage at Fredericka Manor and had purchased a meal plan for the facility dining room, her kitchen and dining ware would no longer be necessary. I tried to remain sensitive to Nana’s need to keep her kitchen tools: broken gadgets and battered pans that had defined her homemaker’s role for 60 years of marriage. But nostalgia soon succumbed to practicality, and the gadgets quietly slipped into the trash behind her back.

Nana and Grandpa seemed happy in their new home. Grandpa puttered around their cottage, making friends and joining a dart team. He was delighted to be free from the constraints of shopping and food preparation and pursued his new-found interests joyfully.

But Nana soon became disoriented with the confusion of Fredericka Manor’s surroundings. She could not remember the names of people with whom she had dined, the same people, every day for a month. Cupboards and drawers, logically arranged by me during their move, frustrated her in her search for belongings.

Her conversations lagged, and her lethargy grew. She began to speak of feeling old.

Her reality became more tenuous as she invited the family to her home for Thanksgiving dinner. Despite Grandpa’s gentle reminders that they no longer had a kitchen or table, her urgency was fueled by her memories of holidays past, when she had basked in the warmth of her loved ones’ dependency. Earnestly she called, insisting she could manage. Patiently we countered, citing why she could not. Nana joined the family at my home in San Carlos, silent in her defeat.

Months later, Nana failed her driving test, losing the license she had not used for years. The following day, deeply depressed, she fell and broke her hip.

During her long convalescence, I finally realized how I had not understood the changes that had taken place in Nana, since moving her to Chula Vista. I simply had not recognized that people age in different ways. For some, like my grandfather, there is a quiet acceptance of the body’s inevitable failings, an acknowledgement of metamorphosis. He is ready to yield to his limitations and gratefully relinquishes responsibility to following generations.

But for others like Nana, aging initiates a compelling search for integrity, a reluctance to tolerate decline. She recedes from the present to the security of her memories, for it is here that her competency prevails.

In assuming control of those areas that needed my direction, I had forced Nana to become a puppet, not realizing her struggle to survive as a puppeteer. I had usurped her role as an integral family authority, rendering her no more than an aged spectator. I had allowed my love for my grandmother to be skewed by my relentless practicality, a trait which propels me successfully through the day as a full-time working mother, but had nearly trampled Nana into oblivion.

There is an unspoken compromise that now governs our relationship. In trying to be more sensitive to those issues that are essential to Nana’s being, I have learned to hesitate before intervening with the efficiency of youth. In letting her “win” at certain times, she has regained her pride, and we are both content.

Nana is supposed to walk with a cane, but she rarely does. The cane has become another victim in her battle to surmount the obstacles of aging. She is slow and unsteady, annoyed that her body is not energized with the tenacity of her will. She continues to deny the undeniable, and I know she will never give up.

Grandpa now lives in the convalescent hospital on the grounds, and Nana struggles over to be with him every day. He is a cheerful resident in a wheelchair, but he speaks of highway robbers and the “tenants” in the next room who owe him rent.

Lately, Nana has been busy, preparing for her celebration. She is gluing the fallen chips of paint onto her old patio chairs, creating mosaics where none should be.She says Grandpa will be able to barbecue hamburgers, and she will make the potato salad she knows was always our favorite.

A celebration she hopes will meet the challenge of her dreams. It would be a triumph for Nana, at a time when her victories are few.