Memories of grandparents
1
The immortal spirit
Seemingly she no longer understood anything. Then, in a flash of lucidity, Mrs Augusta taught me that the spirit does not fall ill.
I think I have heard several times in my life: “she doesn’t understand anything any more, so what’s the point of going?”. Personally I am always wary of such absolute statements, especially when dealing with people who have feelings, a history and a whole life behind them. This was the lesson taught me by Mrs Augusta and by my grandmother.
Mrs Augusta arrived at the care home in a truly unmanageable state. She had an illness that caused her mental confusion, and she was very agitated.
She kept beating her hands against the wheelchair or against her own legs. If you came too close, you risked her grabbing you and even hurting you. She shouted and often hurled insults: certainly not an easy situation, even in a care home run by professionals.
One day, for the umpteenth time, she had taken off her slippers and I had bent down to put them back on her feet when, gripped by one of her usual fits of agitation, she began to hit me on the head with her hand. A little exasperated, in a firm voice I said to her: “why are you doing this?”. I simply could not understand — I was there to help her!
And she, in a moment of utter lucidity, looking at me with her intense blue eyes, said: “because I am ill!”.
That statement, simple as it was, left me stunned: she was certainly not someone from whom you would have expected such a deep awareness of her own illness. To all appearances she was a woman who no longer understood anything, but people are not machines, and they possess resources that often take us by surprise.
The immortal spirit
2
Over the years I have met several people reduced to these extremely confused states; my grandmother was one of them. She too had gradually lost her memory; she certainly did not recognise me and at times struggled to recognise even her own children.
Feelings are not bound to memory, but to the spirit that accompanies us all our life.
The day before she died, one evening, I was in the bedroom with her, with my mother and my aunt. My grandmother had been sick and was truly unwell. She did not speak, but her eyes conveyed weariness, exhaustion, sadness… she had reached her limit.
Probably, in that state, she did not even clearly grasp who the people beside her were. But does a person perhaps not have the right to be loved also — and above all — in such conditions?
What I have understood in many years of volunteering is that you can lose your memory, be confused or not speak at all, yet feelings both positive and negative — love, hatred, loneliness, happiness — remain. Because they are not bound to memory, to the brain or to any particular illness, but to the spirit, which accompanies us inseparably along the journey of our life.
Collected by Riccardo Beretta · AVO Concorezzo volunteer