The memories of long ago, that's, stayed with this, demented, elderly woman, and she still remembered them, in vagueness, but with the moments of lucidity that comes to her every now and, then…translated…
"Did you see the my son's death notice and the household registry, I'd looked, everywhere!", in the long-term care facility, Grandma Chang was flustered in her search, started, asking everybody she'd come across, and, she'd become, unresponsive toward the nursing home employees' ordinariness, as they'd tried, calming her, down, yeah, isn't this, the regular relapses of things of the demented elderly? Time would, always, cause us all to, turn, numb.
I'd pulled out the envelope with the data that Granda Chang was searching frantically for out of the baseboard storage of her bed, that was where she'd placed everything that was important to her. "I'm in debt to you, date of birth, May 13th, during the Ching Dynasty, February 12th the Ching Dynasty under another emperor………" she'd spread open the registry, worked hard, to review all the data that's important to a mother once.
"Attendant, look, this was my third son, Chingfa, born on January third, 1942, and he'd died in 2008, he'd always called me unfair, he'd even, sold my home without my consent, from before, I'd blamed him for being heartless, but I'd, dreamed of him, he said he didn't have any clothes to wear, that he was, so cold; his older brother was there too, told me to burn more paper money offerings to them, can you take me to make the offerings at the Chenghuang Temple?" Grandma Chang's hands were, trembling, carefully, spread the registry that's creased now, completely, open: date of birth, date of death, along with every single thought that's positive and negative that's, completely, attached, and now, all of it, had been, reduced to, the names inside, those, boxes, and, these instances would get blurred, and came back too clearly with her continued deteriorated, state of mind.
most things would get lost, but some had still, managed to, stay, intact...as the memories crumbled down...sketch from online
"ahhhhhhhhhhh, such a long registry, and now, there's, only me who's, remained………", recalling her husband, her deceased sons, her grandsons, Mrs. Chang was, slowly, becoming more and more, depressed by the minute, I'd attempted to divert her attention, "Grandma Chang, didn't you say that the last time you'd burned the offering papers, that Fa had, received every single last one of them, and that you'd dreamed of how he'd gloated on being, among the richest too?", Grandma Chang pointed to the registry, "Yeah, the fortuneteller told us that he was, really greedy that he wouldn't be easily taught, did you know, that once when he was still a young child, he'd climbed up that tree…………", as Grandma Chang told of all of these, her eyes started, glowing of that light again; the laziness of the heated up summer afternoon, it'd, made this mistiness in front of her mind, became, that much, more, lucid.
Until the smokes started rising back up again, the elderly woman, marched satisfied, back into her room for a nap, I'd, gently, collected that piece of household registry, folded up neatly, placed it, back into, the shrines, again. Or maybe, to Grandma Chang, the stories saved in those, tiny little, boxes, was what her home, looked, like.
Because beyond a certain age, all you have is your pasts, the futures won't be yours, because you're, counting down on your life, that's why, you get, hung up on the things that's happened in the past, and, Alzheimer's has a way, of helping people, remember the distant events of ones' lives more lucidly, because those were the memories, that's been there, the longest, and therefore, would naturally be the last ones, we ended up, forgetting at the end.
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