The Lightness of Forgetting

The night he received his death sentence, my grandpa called my mother. "I’m dying, Sam," he said, using her childhood nickname. "Let’s have a party." My grandmother cried softly in the background, repeating the words, "Oh, Michael," to herself and asking him how he could joke "at a time like this."

My grandpa, never one to let sad circumstances prevent him from joking, was actually not joking that night. Tired of the litany of somber, ashen-faced funerals he’d attended recently, he decided that his wake would be his "last big bash." In death, as in life, he wanted to make everyone laugh: throwing his own wake seemed like the perfect thing to do. One last prank to pull. One final excuse to toss back G&T’s while working the room.

The party was thrown together over the next few days. My grandmother called everyone they knew, patiently explaining that the cancer that had taken his right lung seventeen years before had come back for the left lung, then quickly spread everywhere else. My grandpa, eavesdropping in the background, would call out that he had "cancer of the body," a one-liner that made him laugh so hard with each telling that he was forced to take hits of oxygen from the tank he carried strapped to his wheelchair.

Today, more than seven years later, my grandpa has been gone so long that his face is like a faded photograph in my mind. I am trying to remember the exact shape of his smile while sitting with my grandmother, who believes that today is the day of the wake. I’m trying my best to persuade her that her husband has been gone for the better part of a decade, but she remains unconvinced. She weeps with each retelling, grieving for him all over again, but minutes after each reminder, she asks me again what time it is, patting her hair and suggesting I put out some of the platters of food. She can’t remember who I am, so she carefully avoids sentences that would require her to use my name. "Why don’t you check on Michael?" she asks. "There’s no telling what kind of trouble he’s gotten himself into."

Desperate to move beyond this topic of conversation -- to relinquish my role as the bearer of bad news -- I try a new tactic. "Don’t worry, Gram, the party isn’t until tomorrow. You’ve got all day to relax. Grandpa’s at the hospital, so it’s just me and you for today." My lie seems to work, but there’s no telling how long she’ll remember it. Maybe hours, maybe seconds.

"Tomorrow?" she repeats back to me. "Not today?"

"Not today. Today he’s meeting with the doctor, but tomorrow they’ll let him out for the party."

The Alzheimer’s started to become apparent a few years ago, when my mother was helping my grandmother clean her house and discovered a bag of tiny soap slivers under the sink in the bathroom and an entire cabinet full of empty plastic TV dinner containers in the kitchen, the food eaten long ago and the trays washed out. Hording. That’s one of the first signs. Paranoia is another, like when my grandmother accused her mailman of steaming her envelopes open and reading all her mail. Her memory had already started to slip, but we made excuses for her and she hid it well, pretending she knew what we were talking about even when the names were unfamiliar to her. She had always been so good at smiling, nodding gracefully, and playing along that we didn’t notice much of a change, apart from a few illogical actions scattered throughout her days. The beginning stages of Alzheimer’s were frustrating, but bearable. Mid-level Alzheimer’s was awful. She remembered just enough to know that she didn’t remember much anymore, which left her hostile and frustrated. She wept one moment and demanded answers the next.

She’s in the final stages now. A new set of challenges. The memory loss is, at times, total. I am a stranger, constantly reassuring her that we’re related. That I have a right to be alone with her. That she lives here now, in my mother’s house, not in the house she once shared with my grandpa. "Whose house is this?" she’ll ask. "Is someone coming to pick me up and take me home? People could be breaking into my house right now, you know -- taking everything. I should really get home and check." The doctors contradict themselves and each other when advising us as to how we should handle the memory loss. "Tell her when she’s wrong," one will say. "Play along," another suggests. "Just agree with whatever she says. There’s no sense in arguing now—it won’t make any difference." We play it by ear, tailoring our treatment to match her mood. There are good days and bad days.

"You look sad," she tells me when I finally get her to settle into her armchair, crossword puzzle in hand. She won’t complete any of it, but she holds it anxiously, as if at any moment she might fill in all the boxes. "Are you and Michael close?" For a moment I’m more confused than she is. "How do you know Michael?" I want to ask. "Have you been paying attention?" But then I realize she’s talking about her Michael again, not mine. Grandpa, not boyfriend. "Yes," I say. "We were close."

The real reason I’m here, sitting on a flowered couch all day with an ailing senior citizen, is because of what my mother refers to euphemistically (and infrequently) as "that situation in Chicago." The situation is that I came home one day to find a note from my boyfriend -- my Michael -- telling me that he had left me. "You’re not the same anymore," it said. "I don’t love this new person. I’m sorry, but I have to go." At least he was sorry.

Things fell apart after that. My job seemed more awful than ever, the lease on an apartment I couldn’t afford alone was ending, and my friends avoided me, worrying that loneliness was contagious. My mother suggested "a change of scenery," so I put what little I had into storage and came to California, to my childhood home and its changing equations of tenants. Father replaced by stepfather. Sister replaced by grandmother.

"Really? I didn't realize you were close to him." She’s still talking about her Michael, but the implication leaves me raw.

"We were. We were very close. I really don’t know what went wrong." There are tears in my eyes. Tears that my grandmother -- who doesn’t even know she’s my grandmother -- believes I am shedding for a man whose loss I mourned seven years ago.

"I know," she says, stretching her hand out to me in the air. "I know. Sometimes the tears just come. When he dies, I don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t know how I’ll go on. I was just a girl when we were married. Just a bloom of a girl. Now I’m here, watching him die in front of me. It could take years for me to stop crying. That old fool is everything to me." Her head is down, but I see her shoulders shaking as she cries.

The day of my grandpa’s wake was one of those beautiful, crisp spring days where the air makes everyone feel as if they are made of electricity. The San Francisco sky was blindingly blue and the air smelled new and clean. My grandpa was with the day nurse when I arrived. My grandmother was in the kitchen, fussing over trays and trays of food and watching through the back window as the party rental company set up folding tables and chairs with white tablecloths in the backyard. "He insisted on white," she said, more to herself than to me. "Everything white. At his funeral." She stared as two strange men moved about her yard, getting everything just so.

When the day nurse came walking down the hallway, she had a smile on her face. "He’s all yours," she said, motioning her arms toward the bedroom door like a game show hostess. "Behind door two."

In the bedroom, my grandpa sat in his wheelchair in khaki pants and a Hawaiian shirt. He was parked in front of my grandmother’s vanity, looking at her bottles of perfume and lotion, all lined up in two neat rows. "Magnolias," he said, looking at me in the mirror that hung above the vanity. "She’s got all these potions sitting here, but your grandmother always smells like magnolias. I hope they’ve got magnolias where I’m going."

Within fifteen minutes of getting settled into her armchair with an open book of crosswords, my grandmother remembers that she is supposed to be getting ready for a wake. "What time is it?" she asks. "The invitations said one o'clock, didn't they? And where in the good lord’s name is Michael? He’ll be late for his own funeral if he doesn’t get out here before the guests begin to arrive."

"The funeral’s over, Gram. It went beautifully."

After the party rental truck pulled away, my grandmother, who had been standing at the kitchen window the whole time they were there, snapped into action and began directing everyone. It was too last-minute to hire a caterer, so she commanded a fleet of family members instead. My grandmother thrust several bouquets of flowers into my arms and told me to create "suitable" bouquets with them in the vases she provided while my mother and uncles busied themselves setting up food trays and a self-service bar. My grandpa, meanwhile, had commandeered a small drink table and established it as his "DJ booth": a boom box flanked by stacks of Rat Pack CDs. "You can never go wrong with Sinatra and Dino," he told me when I placed a cluster of lilies next to the CD player.

The guests began to arrive just as my grandpa queued up "Lady Is a Tramp." (It was, as he declared, "perfect timing.") It was the happiest wake I’ve ever attended. Anyone caught crying was reprimanded by with a "What do you think this is, a funeral?" from my grandpa. Instead of weeping, the women smiled tight smiles and called him anything from a scamp to a "dear, dear man," depending on how they knew him. The men laughed freely, back-slapping each other after telling stories of Navy exploits, poker nights, golf tournaments. That was what my grandpa wanted: to be fondly and happily remembered while he was still alive, to see his life accounted for right in front of him.

My grandmother remembers none of this now, though whether or not that’s a bad thing, I can’t tell. These days, my memory feels too good. It’s difficult to let my Michael go when I still remember exactly what his voice sounded like the first time he told me he loved me. It’s impossible to be happy sleeping alone when I think of how he’d rub his warm feet against my cold ones each night in bed, trying to warm me up. I loved him -- love him still -- in a blind, complete, and reckless way that left me open for total destruction. Each time my grandmother asks me who I am, I wish that I could wonder the same thing about Michael.

My mother and stepdad come home from work that evening to find my grandmother and I in the living room, our eyes red-rimmed from crying, the TV blaring the nightly news. An empty pot sits on the counter in the kitchen, the only progress I made toward making dinner. "I guess we're going out tonight?" my mother sighs before escaping into her room, where my stepdad will rub her shoulders and reassure her that they'll always be together.

At the restaurant, I drink too much wine and slip into self-pity, my comfort zone. "I don't know what I could have done differently," I say, my eyes glazed with tears. "I don't know how I could have kept from losing him."

"Who is she talking about?" my grandmother stage whispers to my mother. "Michael," my mother answers without thinking.

"You can't blame yourself for the cancer, dear. There was nothing to be done. It comes in the night and eats away at everything. I'm 75 years old today; I've seen a lot of death." she tells us. It's another inaccuracy. She's 88. Her birthday is in a month. We toast to her anyway.

The waitress comes, eyeing my tears suspiciously as she puts another bottle of wine on the table. My grandmother places her hand on the waitress' wrist. "I can't recall your name," she says to the woman, smiling politely. "I know I know you, but I just can't seem to locate your name."

"Alzheimer's," my mother explains curtly to the waitress. "And heartbreak," she adds, tilting her head in my direction. "They're harmless." The waitress smiles, backs away.

When the wake was in full swing, I heard the gentle ding of a fork tapping glass. The crowd quickly quieted and looked toward the "DJ booth," where my grandpa was sitting in his wheelchair, grinning a Cheshire grin at the crowd, my grandmother standing awkwardly next to him, her hand gripping his shoulder tightly.

"I'd like to thank you all for coming," he said, his voice a confident boom that refused to betray the decay in his lungs. "We'd both like to thank you. I know not everyone likes to say goodbye, but I don't believe in leaving anything unfinished. You all know I'm dying." He patted his chest, smiled wryly. "I don't need to explain that. I asked you here because I wanted to say goodbye to all of you, goodbye to everyone I've loved." My grandmother's chin dropped to her chest; she wiped at her eyes with the handkerchief she'd been carrying in her pocket all day. My mother, suddenly at my side, reached out to hold my hand in hers. "I've been around a long time, and I've met a lot of people, but everyone here is special to me. I believe in heaven, and I believe that's where I'm going. I hope to watch you all from there. I hope to see you all doing wonderful things. And maybe, just maybe," he winks at a golfing buddy, "hitting par." He pauses for the laughter. "It's a beautiful day; let's enjoy it."

After dinner, we return home and park ourselves in front of the TV. My mother flips the TV to Home and Garden Television, where it remains for the rest of the night. My grandmother, subdued by the night's activity and wine, sits quietly in her chair, singing old church songs quietly to herself. By ten o'clock, everyone has gone to sleep.

I lay awake in bed, listening to the sounds of the house. My laptop hums on the desk next to me, a sound I can't resist. I get out of bed, still a little dizzy from all the wine, and sit down to type another email to Michael. I've sent dozens since he left me.

There's been no improvement in my grandmother's condition, I write, and the nature of it means that there never will be. No ups, no downs. There are moments of lucidity, but they're increasingly infrequent. She's never going to get better. Someday, maybe even someday soon, we'll have to put her in a home. Send her away because it's what's best for her. Best for everyone.

What I'm saying is that I understand. We didn't have ups or downs anymore. I didn't know it was over; I didn't know you were gone. You went away because you thought it was best for everyone. I guess I must have become as much a stranger to you as she is to me. I'm tempted to call him. I pick up my cell phone, his number still programmed in, then put it down again.

I miss you like crazy, kid. I remember everything. Jesus Christ, I remember everything. I wish I could just be like her. I wish I could be stuck in a day two weeks before you left me. I wish I were ignorant to everything. I wish I were with you. I send the email and get back into bed.

By evening, all the guests had gone home from the wake. Only family remained, my mother, sister, and I gathered in the living room with my grandparents, all telling one another what a lovely day it had been and how it had all gone so well. My grandpa, tired from the day's strain on his health, drooped in his wheelchair, his eyes dim. My uncles took him to his room, helping him into his pajamas and his bed. When he was settled in, I went to his bathroom to get his nightly batch of pills together.

Coming out of the bathroom, I saw my grandmother sitting on the edge of the bed, smiling and rubbing my grandpa's cheek with the back of her hand. "My love, my love," she said to him. "What will I do without you?"

The next morning, I get out of bed long after my parents have gone to work. I find my grandmother already up, sitting with a glass of water in her hands, staring blankly at the television, which is still tuned to my mother's home renovation shows. "My house is lovelier than any of these, you know. Michael helped me make it beautiful."

I go back to my room and call Michael's cell phone number, but get sent to his voicemail after two rings. "I've got to forget, don't I?" I hang up.