Thursday, December 26, 2002

This being the season of

This being the season of family togetherness, in theory anyway, I find myself avoiding the question why I don’t want to contact my grandmother.  It’s certainly not as if she’d remember three minutes after she put down the letter or the phone that I’d written or called; the whole family knows Zerline’s mind has substantially deteriorated.  She can remember the past.  She is unfailingly polite and kept a trace of her sense of humor.  But she has no short term memory at all; she can’t make new memories.  She can’t get out of her wheelchair.  She can barely speak, and often doesn’t for long stretches.  We didn’t take her to her husband’s funeral.  But I should be sending her cards, supporting her, directing my love to her.... instead, I treat her as if she were already gone.  Is it because I fear her fate - mental incapacity - more than about any other?  Is it fear of mortality?  Misguided resentment?  Sheer sloth?  She was a great and powerful woman with much to contribute.  She deserves better.  Yet it would make no difference to her if I wrote her or called her or not - no difference at all.  I would be doing it for myself.  The more I beat myself up, the less willing I am to do the deed.  I’m making myself recalcitrant.