Trouble Eating

For those of you who have known me for a while, it's no big news that my grandmother has Alzheimer's. I realize that most of you probably know this, but just to be upfront and everything, Alzheimer's is a mentally degenerative disease that specifically affects memory, breaking it down over time.

My grandmother is in Stage Six of Alzheimer's, and well on her way into the seventh. No, she doesn't ever recognize me, though she's become familiar to my general presence around the house. She knows who my grandfather is for the most part, though when he is in another room she will look over at him and ask me who he is.

I guess the real reason I'm writing this is because very recently (as in the past three or four days) my grandmother has somehow forgotten how to eat.

Let's back this up a little and do a little explaining. First off, Filipino people (and many other Asians) eat with a fork and a spoon. The fork is held in the left hand and the spoon in the right; the fork is used to hold food down while the edge of the spoon is used to cut it. Typically the fork is used to push food onto the spoon. [Honestly, I don't understand how people here eat with a fork and a knife, it strikes me as one of the most illogical systems known to mankind.] Secondly, there is normally a bowl of what Filipinos would call sawsawan, which is a combination of soy sauce, fish sauce, lemon, or vinegar (usually not all four at the same time), which is either dabbed onto each bite or only on the ulam, or whatever is being eaten with the rice.

Nowadays my grandmother never picks up her fork. She'll use her spoon to awkwardly cut at whatever meat or fish is on her plate, and then try to get a spoonful of both meat and rice together. This process usually involves using her fingers. The fork just sits there on the side of her plate. The sawsawan also just sits there, almost embarrassingly useless, equidistant between her and my grandfather but only used by one of them.

It's fairly worrying stuff. This is the third summer I've lived in my grandparents' basement, and I have of course watched my grandmother's mental faculties slowly deteriorate overtime. I've been witness to many outbursts; just yesterday she slammed her glass of juice on the table because she didn't want to take her medicine. This however, stands out. Eating is one of the simplest, most standard of daily routines. Having difficulty eating is a sure sign that there's this transition to Stage Seven.

This is the first time I'm writing about my grandmother's condition, but it certainly won't be my last. To end this all off, I leave you with a short snippet I wrote on my old blog.

May Twenty-Ninth, Two-thousand Nine.

Ghosts.

I just realized that to my grandmother, this house is full of ghosts.

Not being able to remember anything, the sounds she hears from above, with Anh and her children on the upper floor, and the noises she hears from below, with me living in the basement with the radio going, are a quiet commotion that cannot be attributed to two octogenarians lying in their bed.

At times I am walking in and out of the living room, and perhaps she glimpses my comings and goings. She is surprised every time, and does not call out. Who does she think I am? Some phantom who stalks a path from basement to sofa then back?

The walls are covered in photos of past celebrations- birthday parties, anniversaries, and the like. There are grandchildren she cannot recognize, their pictures changing every so often as they age. All around the house there are families of strangers- happy, smiling people, all of them foreign and unknown.

Even as I sit here writing this, the door creaks open and eyes peer out of a darkened room. Before I can even raise a hand to wave the door is shut again. 

Perhaps, taking this into account, it is my grandmother who is the ghost- haunting a house that does not belong to her.