He bestows one of those charming smiles on me, and like the giddy schoolgirl I am, I bask in its glow.
This is the Miles I remember from my childhood. The boy who could smile and use his cunning wit and boyishly good looks to get away with anything. The boy everyone loved and adored and the one the girls flocked to, hoping to be plucked from the crowd and singled out for his attention.
Miles lifts his shoulder. “What can I say? It’s one of my many talents.”
I snort as we enter a crowded cafeteria filled with fifteen or so circular tables, each table surrounded by elderly residents and their aides. It’s not a particularly full room, but for the number of people in it, there isn’t much noise.
We stop just inside the door as Miles scans the area in search of his grandmother.
“There she is.” Miles lifts his chin toward a table in the back corner.
I take a step forward only to be stopped abruptly by the tug of his hand. I whip my head around to see him with apprehension sketched across his furrowed brows.
He clears his throat, voice quiet and hesitant. Completely unlike the guy who was just joking a moment ago.
“Um, I failed to mention something.” He pauses, inhaling a deep breath before breathing out. I give his hand a reassuring squeeze.
“It’s fine, Miles. I understand.”
His gaze falls to the floor. “Granny has good days and bad. Sometimes she’s the way she’s always been, but sometimes, and most often, she lapses into a woman who’s not all there.”
“Dementia?”
His face turns to stone, eyes like dark granite in their fury over his grandmother’s condition.
“Yeah. It started two years ago and has progressively gotten worse. In fact, last Saturday, before the volunteer event, I had to make an emergency trip up here because she fell and reinjured her hip. When I asked her what happened, she had no recollection of why she was in a wheelchair to begin with. I’m just warning you that. . . well, she may not know who you are.”
Compressing my lips together, I give him a tight nod, hoping he knows he’s not alone, and I’m here for him.
The minute we hit Iris’s table, her eyes light up with the joy only a grandmother can feel when seeing a loved one.
“Miles! You’re here. I’ve missed you.”
And then she sees me, and something in her eyes flickers and stutters, a memory escaping the recesses of her mind and reemerging in a new, indiscernible appearance.
Iris’s voice weakens and comes out almost as a whispered sob.
“Meli? Is that you?”
31
Miles
My feet falter,and it feels like my gut has been hit with a battering ram.
And by the look across Sutton’s face, she’s experiencing the same level of torment.
When I began talking to Granny’s doctors, they indicated that lucidity is a fragile thing with dementia patients, and their brains just don’t function to filter out reality, the past or the present. There is confusion, mix-ups, anger and agitation, and sometimes just pure radiant joy.
Seeing the approval and love that generates from Granny’s appearance right now, in her belief that Sutton is her granddaughter, is too much to squash by telling her otherwise.
Sutton’s head turns to stare at me with the unspoken question of “What do I do?”
I take the problem off her hands and respond to Granny, bending down to kiss her weathered and wrinkly cheek. “Hi, Granny. Look who I brought with me tonight for dinner.”
Tears gather in the corner of her eyes, and I can barely stand here in this lie. But what else am I supposed to do? Tell her she’s wrong, that Sutton isn’t her granddaughter because Mel’s dead?
It would be a recipe for disaster. Granny wouldn’t be able to comprehend or disassociate this present reality with what she believes to be true in her mind. And no matter what I would say to correct her assumptions, it would only create a further disconnect and then an outburst of frustration.
