Ziplocks and Cumbias

Each time he holds up the baggies to count the pills, I notice his hands. You can always tell someone’s age from their hands. They can have all the collagen treatments and botox injections on their faces, but when you look at their hands you know the truth. My grandfather’s are no different. His thick blue veins bulge over tendons and make his skin seem even more transparent. The only spots that are opaque are the places where he has large maroon bruises. The blood pressure medication makes his skin ultra-sensitive. When I look at his hands I get nervous. God, will my hands look like that in fifty years? And if my hands look like that will my children and grandchildren start to talk about how when they’re old, they’re going to have enough money to be put in an old folks home and not be a burden on their kids? It’s no wonder that I entertain these thoughts. Aunt Lisa and Uncle Don always talk about it and everyone else thinks it but is too afraid to mention the fact that both Grandma and Grandpa are in pretty bad shape.

Grandpa is sitting at the kitchen table in front of a buffet of orange medicine bottles. He holds up almost identical white pills and separates them into baggies. He is trying to organize his and Grandma’s prescriptions after losing their part-time nurse and housekeeper. Today he’s trying a new method of keeping track of the meds for the week—Ziplocks.

It’s ridiculous. There are twenty-eight Ziplock baggies all over the table. Some have even fallen to the floor without him noticing. How can he keep track of all of them when none of them are labeled? No wonder why he’s losing his mind, how’s he supposed to remember who is supposed to take what pills at what time? Anyone’s memory would fail this kind of task. There are fourteen baggies for him, fourteen baggies for her: at least nine pills twice a day. Well, I guess this seems like a better plan than last week. He used to think that using his pockets as a pill organizer was a great idea, until he couldn’t remember whose pills were in which pockets. Me on the left and her on the right? Or was she on the left and me on the right? That was quite the scene, Grandpa would hold up a tiny pink pill and wonder, do I take the pink one, or does she?
I realize that Grandpa shouldn’t have this responsibility because of the state of his memory, but it’s the only option right now. I never thought his memory was quite so bad because I was always comparing it with Grandma’s. Grandma started suffering from dementia several years ago, but Grandpa has only recently started to lose his memory and get confused. Before it was just his body that looked old, but now his mind is quickly catching up, or slowing down.

I can’t get the image of his hands out of my head. They are so different from the tan, fleshy hands I remember as a kid. He and Grandma used to visit my family in Tucson. They were living in San Diego and Costa Rica, but they would always come visit us when they had the chance. Those same hands that are now struggling to sort pills used to be skilled and precise as they tied knots and rigged bird traps in my backyard. After we caught the quails he plucked all their feathers in the kitchen sink and carefully slit open their bellies to clean out their guts. I wonder if he remembers that afternoon in the bright desert sun. I hope the bruises on his hands don’t mean what I think it means. Maybe he’s going through some kind of medical treatment my mom didn’t tell me about. I guess the only thing I can do is ask him about it.

“Lelo, que paso con los manos…I mean, uh, las manos?” I can’t believe I still haven’t figured out if “hands” is feminine or masculine. I shouldn’t have blown off high school Spanish class.

“Eh…nada.” He sheepishly says, while glancing at his hands and quickly hiding them in his pockets. Great, I’ve embarrassed him. He’s a grown man who used to change my diapers when I was a kid, and now I’ve asked a simple question and he’s ashamed.

“La medicina lo hiso.” The medicine gives and the medicine takes away. Ironic, isn’t it? A person takes medicine to make their insides better, but their outsides end up looking beat to hell.

Yesterday Grandma and I were sitting on the couch crocheting. Well, actually I was crocheting and she’s trying to. She used to make me crocheted slippers every year for Christmas and crocheted clothes for my dolls, but now she can’t remember how to make a scarf, the easiest possible project. Between looping yarn and trying to keep count I patiently answered her questions about my life. Yeah, she was probably at the hospital when I was born, but she keeps on asking me if I was born there, in Costa Rica. When my mom talks to her on the phone now they can’t talk about me and my brother, it’s just too confusing to her. She doesn’t remember us.

I want to go home. I can’t believe I came down to Costa Rica to have a mini-vacation. What was I thinking? Well, I guess I was thinking that my grandparents could take care of themselves and that their old age wouldn’t depress me. It’s so beautiful here, but I’m ready to get back to speaking English and ignoring the fact that my grandparents are changing. I’m tired of helping them because it just makes me realize that they can’t take care of themselves anymore. And what will they do when we all go home to our clean, organized lives? Their kitchen will get dirty again, Grandma will forget how to make rice again, even though she’s been making rice sine she was twelve years old. I’m exhausted by this whole situation. How many times should I remind her that sugar is bad for her because of her diabetes, all kinds of sugar? She can’t remember that sugar in her coffee is still sugar. It’s almost funny how she sneaks around when she thinks no one is looking. But we see the spoonful stirred into the coffee. We see the pastries they buy from the bakery around the corner. They just had to move in to a place by a bakery. When we went to the coast last weekend Grandma decided to bring a stash of goodies to eat. I guess in her mind she just wanted a couple easy snacks in case she and Grandpa got hungry. But when Lisa opened up the duffle bag where she thought she would find a pair of clean pants, she found pastries, rolls, buns and even a slice of cake. Oh well, right?

Although it’s terribly cliché, ignorance sometimes really is bliss. I knew they were getting old, but this was just too real. I don’t want to see them as they begin to forget who I am or how to do all the things I expect them to do and that they have been doing as long as I can remember. Every other moment is tainted by my realization that when I leave, I’m going to have to trust that they will be ok. I can only hope that the remembered to take some of the pills some of the time.

Even though they seem like a complete mess lately, they are happier than I’ve ever seen them. It seems that, in their old age, they’ve finally accepted the fact that they are stuck together, so they might as well try to enjoy their senility as a team. I used to only remember Grandma mumbling under her breath about how frustrating Grandpa was, and Grandpa would just throw his hands up in their air and walk out of the room. But now they seem happy and in love again. Maybe it’s because they aren’t confused by each other and in each other’s presence is where they can find safety and security. Yeah, I think they’ve fallen in love with each other again in this last phase of their lives and they are trying to have a little fun every once in a while.

Like right now. Grandma just turned on the radio and a cumbia is playing. Grandpa puts down the baggies, takes off his glasses, and teeters towards her in the kitchen. I look up from the dingy couch and see him gently put his arms around Grandma’s plump body. He smiles like a mischievous teenager at his first un-chaperoned dance. My grandmother starts to laugh and it’s such an unexpected sound in this house that the gardener, my aunt who was sleeping in the next room, and my cousin come in to see what the commotion is. We just stand back and shake our heads. They seem to tell us, in their own ways, that we can do all the worrying, but they’re going to enjoy what they have left.