nursing_home tender_square the staff asked if i had travelled outside of the country and i lied. donned a mask and lathered my hands in purell, shot my wrist against a temperature gauge. nose swabbed with a skinny bristle that tickled and fifteen minutes to be cleared for go-ahead. i brought a tupperware of homemade cookies. grandma was dressed in grey; her top decorated in plum and turquoise petals. wearing red lips and dangling diamond earrings, her silver hair pulled into a bun with a blue scrunchie, as though she were anticipating visitors even though we never told her we were stopping by. grandma hovered above her easy chair when mom and i entered her room. the two of them embraced, grandma shrinking with the passage of years, looking like a child with her eyes closed as my mother clasped her protectively. “how are you?” mom asked, and grandma answered, “i’m dead.” grandma kissed my masked cheeks ten times a piece, i held her hands to guide her as she sat in her recliner. mom talked of the queen’s funeral, how four mounties led the long processional. we complimented grandma’s careful colouring pages of shaded butterflies hung on the beige walls, the three of us breaking into farfallina song (though i don’t know the lyrics past the first few bars). when mom took a phone call, grandma recalled meeting my husband for the first time eight years ago, not knowing he wasn’t with me for a reason. an aide walked in and said, “grace, there’s a man coming to play some music and i thought you’d want to know.” and so we took her walker to the cafeteria and sat beside the residents in wheelchairs with blankets over their legs while was 84 degrees beyond the child-proof windows. a middle-aged scottish man strummed an acoustic guitar as he crooned hank williams and perry como, don ho and the andrews sisters and we joined in with the words we knew, my grandmother harmonizing in her unique way. a bearded man in grey sweatpants wandered between watchers looking down at his feet, both here and not here. grandma walked us to the elevator when the singing man was told to pack it up. “i can never stay for long,” mom said on the car ride back. “seeing that man moving during the concert reminded me of your dad and what’s going to happen to him.” she talked about a nearby neighbour whose husband also has alzheimer’s, how she learned the man was becoming violent with his wife, he was so combative, and she wondered if my father would ever get to that point. “he wakes up in the middle of the night disoriented, not knowing where he is.” i asked how long it had been going on. “for a while now.” how long is a while? “two years,” she said. “he cries in his sleep and yells.” she tells me she wants to keep him out of a home as long as she can, which means she’ll push herself to go beyond what she should. we try to trace the length of time he’s been in the mid-to-moderate stage of the disease, not knowing if we have more good years ahead or behind us. “he hides how bad it is,” she said. “just like your grandmother did.” 220919 ... tender_square grandma complained about her new prescription glasses being a waste of money that mom shouldn’t have bothered with. “i’m seeing double from double,” grandma said, pointing at both chestnut orbs and what glaucoma could be taking from her. an orderly came by with a cart offering lemon tarts and ginger ale to residents only, and she took the amber soda poured in the plastic cup without saying please. mom brushed grandma’s cloud of hair into a high ponytail secured by scrunchies, wrapped a second band around the buttery coloured bun. “i don’t remember my husband,” she said. “i look at pictures and i know it’s him but i can’t remember.” “dad was hardly ever around,” mom reminded. “you were only together for twelve years before he died, and before his accident, he was working all the time.” “you know, there are times when i think about earlier parts of my life and i feel like they belonged to another person,” i said. “age does strange things to us,” i added. grandma nodded soberly from her rollator seat. the same orderly returned with more diapers and grandma hollered at her before the woman slunk away, defeated. “i want to escape from here and go away,” grandma said. “what are you going to do? take your blankets and tie them into an escape rope?” mom quipped. “it’s not funny!” grandma shouted. “i used to be able to go places!” i rubbed grandma’s hunched shoulder in consolation. mom mimed to me that we would go in ten minutes time. no orderly came to interrupt us with an activity, the quickest way to take attention off our taking leave. grandma insisted on walking us to the end of the wing. and through the rectangle of glass of the doors that locked behind us, she watched us with watering eyes as we waved while waiting for the elevator. the look on her face said that it wasn’t her epiphora. 221128 ... tender_square she admitted to being in a terrible mood since the night prior. she dismissed me when i asked why, saying it didn't matter. "i'm mad that rena put me in this place." for once the anger was directed at my aunt and not my mother. grandma has complained about every place she's ever lived, even when she was on her own. "that's just your personality, you find it difficult to stay happy," mom said. but i wanted to ask is it personality or her illness? or is it a matter of being human and dissatisfied with everything we come to take for granted? "i don't want to be here! i don't want to die here!" grandma's state of agitation struck a chord of fear: living in a place on loan, with constant staff interruptions, witnessing other residents expire one by one. "did someone die on this floor?" i asked. she said she didn't know their name but knew their face, which happens when you break bread three times a day for months in the communal dining area. grandma didn't sleep all night; she was thinking about her younger sister, carmella, who died last month from an infection when her brittle teeth were removed. my aunt had put up pictures of carmella and grandma posing together on the walls of her room. 230206 what's it to you? who go blather from