12:01 a.m.
Got stuck in front of the Biography channel tonight for a couple hours. I'm a sucker for life stories.

Grandma has been having pain and swelling in one of her hands so I got her a doctor's appointment, thus had to go to town. It was not the most pleasant day I've spent, because the Neck Thing was bothering me, as it has for the past week. All I wanted was to get home so I could take a pill and lay down. As it turned out, by the time I left town I'd also been out for lunch, shopped for Grandma, and had a haircut, and when I finally got here I took a pill and felt fine within an hour. Shoulda taken the damn pill before leaving, obviously. However, Doc told me today that I shouldn't take more than four of the pills in any given week. If I have another week like the past one, that won't be easy.

In the doctor’s waiting room, which was unusually full, everyone was talking to each other. "How are you?" someone asked Grandma and she replied "Ohhhh, pretty good, but not quite 100%" and someone remarked “If we were 100% we wouldn’t be here would we” and everyone nodded.

It’s so different from waiting rooms in the city, where people avoid each other’s eyes and pretend to be alone. Here, some of the old men had put their caps up on a shelf above the coats, which were fitted onto hangers. I saw that one old gentleman, when he came out and retrieved his cap, had even left his mail underneath it. You’d never see that in the city!

There were people in that waiting room from miles away. A lady who'd travelled some distance to see the doctor struck up a conversation with an old fellow sitting across from her. She recognized him, but didn’t recall his name. He remembered her sister, he said; didn’t she used to “go with” So-and-so? Yes indeed, the sister had, and had married him, but So-and-so is “not here any more,” she told the inquisitive gent.

Another oldster came out of the doctor’s office and sat in the waiting room to wait for his ride. He would be going into the hospital for a few days, he told the man sitting next to him; he wasn’t able to eat anything at all. He looked like he felt pretty lousy.

I was near tears several times this morning. Maybe it was the migraine thing, which brings on fatigue; that can be tear-prompting. But some of it was the simple observation of conditions so many of us are brought to by aging. We are slow, we are tired, we are sick, we have to rely on others to help us and take us places, sometimes we can’t live alone, we are institutionalized apart from our family members, we lose our spouses and friends, we go places with our granddaughters but lack confidence, aren’t sure we’re going in the right direction, don't remember what was said five minutes ago. It struck me hard today, even though I try to believe we can make the best of these conditions and changes if we look for the beauty in life and don't dwell on what has been lost.

Lately Grandma always thanks me when I drop her off. She thanks me for doing things for her. Today I said, “Well, you’ve done things for me all my life; why shouldn’t I do for you, now?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s the way it goes,” she said.

“As well it should,” I replied.

My uncle Bruce, to whom I spoke twice today about Grandma’s sore hand and the doctor visit, also thanked me both times for taking care of things. I responded with a casual “Uh huh” and it’s nice that my efforts are appreciated but at the same time thanks are unnecessary. She’s my grandma; who else should be doing these things for her? I’m one of those who should naturally reach for these responsibilities without thinking of myself as a hero for doing so.

I think of all the schooldays when my siblings and I wandered down the Margo street to Grandma and Grandpa’s for a hot lunch. The table would be set and bowls of steaming food would be placed before us. Kraft Dinner or fried potatoes were staples of these meals, which we kids loved; to this day, no one makes either dish as tasty as Grandma did.

We hardly ever took a packed lunch to school. At the time I never questioned it, but now I think surely Grandma had better things to do than make and clean up after a noontime meal for her grandchildren five days a week. How did she end up doing that, I wonder. Was it her idea? Grandpa’s? She did it for years.

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