Gram Poops

Somewhere along the way Gram decided it was okay to start pooping in front of me.  My whole life she had so many rules about physical contact and dignity:  no kisses on the mouth (her father never did that, it's disgusting), make sure to always have a supply of disinfecting wipes with you because you never know what kind of people have used the public toilets (the implication being you could get black or jew germs on you), and so many secrets in the family closet having to do with bodies and sex and identity that a kid like me grew up with a healthy or unhealthy fear of asking any real questions.

But now I go over there and climb the red-carpeted stairs, following the  oxygen tube's long, snaking path to the second floor, and halfway up I can hear the grunts and moans.  "Gram?" I call out ten or twelve times as I sloooowly ascend the stairs, hoping that she'll hear me and tell me to wait downstairs or at least shout out "look away!" when I get to the open doorway.  But that doesn't happen.  Instead there is her great, huge butt, draped over the sides of the toilet seat, her body inclined forward in mid-wipe.  She talks to me from there, in between her ongoing pleadings with the "goddamned piece of shit" that is torturing her to get OUT of her body.  Lately, it refuses.  This causes her great pain and also a lot of clean-up as she slowly loses control of what is happening down there.

This is recent, but looking back I see foreshadowing of this total release of self-consciousness around the plodding devolution of her body.

I brought the girls to visit her last summer.  She was still able to get up and around without the use of a walker, and could still hear well enough to answer the phone.  But she was also bad enough that she forgot things like appointments and plans, and spent a fair amount of time in bed.

The girls had loved going to see her because she usually gave them an entire package of Oreos EACH and a roll of quarters or a hundred dollar bill, back in the gravy days.  So my six-year-old went busting up the stairs, expecting to see the old gram, and instead was greeted by a wild-haired, naked mammoth of a woman, unsteady on her feet, pendulous breasts framed by great draping swaths of skin.

Nolie screamed as she rounded the corner and flew past me back down the stairs.  I was also appropriately horrified, mostly because I had always been terrified of Gram and also because I thought *she* would be horrified at being caught in such a state.

But she wasn't.  "I ate two pounds of grapes and a pork chop last night," she said, as she laboriously pulled some underwear on.  "I've had diarrhea like you wouldn't believe!  I can't come out with you today, but you'll come back at noon tomorrow and we'll have lunch then."

And that was that.  Back then, diarrhea.  Now constipation.I think it is not long before I may have to clean her up, and that I am not looking forward to.  At.  All.

But there is also a beauty to this total breaking down.  She grabs me hard when I get ready to leave at the end of our daily visits, and hugs with a fierce vulnerability she would have never let herself show when we both were younger.  She kisses me on the mouth.  She loves being caressed on the arm when I come into her room to wake her up so she can eat, and craves signs of tenderness, as she inches her way toward dying, in her bed on the second floor, independent but also alone and lonely.  All of this surprises me, and also is touching in its desperation and difficulty.