what must it be like not to trust your own mind? what happens to a person when their memories so precise in chronological order are shaken up like a bingo wheel and you are left to sort through the broken pieces?
truthfully we've never been close. blood bonds us but little else. i'm too outspoken, too inappropriate, eating with my elbow on the table and knife raised almost like i'm ready for any unseen combat, an obtuse reminder of the schism between ladylike gentility of her time and the abhorrent modern rejection of those values.
yet we've always harbored an affection. i was the first grandchild, a boon to her good genes with her ski-jump nose leaping generations to my face and her translucent skin on my back. however, that deep-seated understanding between generations has eluded us for reasons i can only speculate.
seeing her now, during the only time of year that i have had in the past seven years, breaks my heart in ever increasing unique ways. only the disease crafted by the cruelest hand could possibly create one that lets the infected's mind crumble while those who love them watch the person they knew disintegrate.
of course now, at the likely end of her days, is the time when i want to know her most, to understand her. how typical of the human condition to only want that which is increasingly out of their reach. i'm going to interview her. to sit her down with a cup of herbal tea and some recording device and ask her questions not through the lens of the family member but as someone who just wants to know about her. i'm afraid if i don't do this, she's going to slip away through my fingertips like sand. i want her to be known. i want her to have an impact. i want her life to have meaning.
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