Absurd: “Contrary to reason or propriety; obviously and flatly opposed to manifest truth; inconsistent with the plain dictates of common sense; logically contradictory; nonsensical; ridiculous;”
Sometimes life in general strikes me as absurd. And I find the absurd funny, most of the time. Whether that observation about the absurdity of life is valid or not, life with Grandpa is certainly absurd–with an emphasis on the nonsensical and contrary to reason and propriety. Some people find the absurd very frustrating, but with Grandpa I usually manage to maintain a fairly good sense of humor.
Today Grandma had an angina attack and was laid up in bed for most of the day, leaving Grandpa with me as his only company. He went to check the mail three times in the afternoon. The first time he brought the mail in. The second two times I think were sparked by latent agitation over Grandma being missing and Grandpa feeling like he needed to find something to do.
The first and second time he went out to check the mail he got himself together pretty well. The third time out I caught him walking toward the stairs wearing only one shoe–on the wrong foot–and carrying a large couch cushion under his arm, and carrying a second pair of shoes as well. Grandpa doesn’t like–in fact he hates–to be humiliated. For this reason, as a rule, I avoid pointing out to him that he is doing something wrong unless he expresses a desire for help. However this is a delicate balance because he if he discovers for himself that he was being a fool and realizes that you didn’t point it out to him he still feels humiliated. But my normal course is to ask him if he is having trouble, and if he needs any help. If his answers is “No and no,” I usually will let him continue on his own course, however absurd and ludicrous so long as the situation is not dangerous or heading for an outright disaster. I feel it saves Grandpa from having someone continually breathing down his neck saying “Don’t do that” and “Don’t do this” and frankly most of the stuff he does is silly or pointless, but there isn’t any real harm in it, so why give the poor guy a hard time. But no method is perfect all the time.
“Where are you going?” I said to Grandpa as he walked by. “You going on a trip?” Sometimes a general question will make Grandpa stop and consider what he is doing. Sometimes. But not this time.
“Yep,” Grandpa said without halting, and continued toward the stairs.
Carrying a large pillow under one arm and wearing the one shoe on the wrong foot made navigating the stairs harder. I watched him carefully as he went down the stairs, tensed and ready to lunge after him should he start to fall.
“Where is he going?” Mel said, stopping in the hall.
“He’s going out carrying a pillow and a pair of shoes, and wearing only one shoe,” I said.
“You’re going to let him go?” she said.
I shrugged. “He won’t get far.” I was confident that he wouldn’t take more than a few steps out in the cold weather before realizing he hadn’t attired himself correctly. He would realize his error for himself with me telling him he wasn’t allowed to go out as he wanted.
I started down the stairs and by the time I reached the front door the latch was already rattling. I opened the door.
“You want to come back in?” I said.
“Yeah,” Grandpa said, sounding equal parts surprised and perplexed. “I can’t be out here like this. I only have one sock on.”
And then I couldn’t help it. If I had acted completely normal, as if wasn’t at all odd to accidentally go walking out the front door without one of your shoes on, Grandpa might have escaped without embarrassment. But his tone of bewildered surprise and shock was too much, and I started laughing. Fortunately Grandpa must have seen some of the humor in it because he looked at me and started laughing as well. But he was embarrassed too, because as funny as it was he also realized that it was funny because he had done a very foolish and silly thing.
“Well,” he said. “You think I should sneak in the back way to escape the humiliation? I’m sorry–”
He started his usual apologizing, but I told him it was no problem, and he wasn’t stupid, I just thought it was funny, that was all. Trying to choke back my laughter I helped him back up to the top of the stairs. I relieved him of his couch cushion and his extra pair of shoes, switched his one shoe to the proper foot and helped him put the mate on. Then I gave him his cane and let him go out to check the mail again.
****
Grandpa is having increasing difficulty in relating properly to everything, but this is starting to show in particular in relation to his clothes. He often fails to remember what clothes go on first, and what clothes go on what part of his body. Some days he is better than others, but one day a week or two ago every time I turned around he was out of his clothes and needing my help getting dressed. He was trying to go to the bathroom but would always end up getting undressed instead of doing his business. Late afternoon I found him completely naked in the downstairs bathroom trying to put on his undershirt like a part of undershorts.
That is Grandpa at his worst. Sometimes he can still get himself completely dressed. Most of the time he needs some prompting. But besides dressing problems he is also regressing in his cognizance of the use of his clothing. Years ago when he had everything together Grandpa carried around a wad of carefully folded toilet paper or paper towels to blow on nose with. He was neat and he was careful. Now you can often see Grandpa using a garment to wipe his nose. It looks very childish, of course, and I think it is a combination of regression to childish impulses, and also a confusion of use–he sometimes mistakes his clothing as a proper object for nose blowing.
This confusion has led to some more absurd happenings.
Grandpa usually goes to bed wearing an undershirt and undershorts. Since he has begun worrying about wetting the bed (something he hasn’t actually done, yet) he wears a diaper to bed instead of undershorts, though he has a problem of forgetting to put the diaper back on during his many night time trips to the bathroom, and sometimes in the middle of the night he ends up switching back to his undershorts, and other times ends up going to back to bed with nothing on. Which means I must go to the bathroom and fetch his diaper and help him put it back on and then tuck him back in.
Anyhow . . . one night he came back into the bedroom after a bathroom trip wearing his undershorts and carrying his undershirt balled up in his hands. Apparently somehow in the process of going to the bathroom he had become confused into taking it off. I asked him if he wanted help putting the undershirt back on. He said, “No. I think I’ll just go to bed.”
Forward to later in the night and I wake up to Grandpa coming back from the bathroom again. He doesn’t turn the light on, but feels his way over to his bed and sits down on the edge. I can see him in the dim light filtering through the window into the room. He doesn’t look much inclined to lie down immediately so I sit up to see what he intends to do. Grandpa plucks at the leg of his undershorts and then promptly pulls the garment entirely off. Balling it up decisively, he wipes his nose vigorously on his undershorts and tosses the garment away in the darkness. He is sitting on the edge of his bed in the darkness wearing absolutely nothing.
“Um . . . Grandpa,” I said. “You think maybe you want to put something on?”
“Oh,” he said. “I suppose I can put some socks on.”
“No,” I said, picking up the diaper from the floor. “How about this?”
“Oh, that. Okay.” And he let me help him put the diaper on without the least sign of realizing he had just done a very absurd thing.
The next night he did an almost exact repeat. Except this time he was wearing his diaper and pawed around on the floor until he found his underwear. This time instead of simply wiping his nose he carefully took his underwear and blew his nose on it nosily.
It is all very absurd, especially when I know very well that if Grandpa realized what he was doing he would be horrified and embarrassed–both at the foolishness of his actions and because he is very modest and is mortified when he is aware of his nakedness. But often he doesn’t, and I try to simply help him as need and make no mention of the situation.
****
Grandpa’s back has been bothering him more than usual today. The pain has come severe enough at times that he must quickly sit down or lay down. He lay down on the couch around nine and promptly fell asleep. I am always loathe to move him when he is sleeping so well on the couch, (especially since he can wake up confused or unwilling to go to bed, and because it can at times be a big project to get him to bed,) but I am leery about leaving him to sleep alone on the couch. Last time he did that he had an accident and peed on the carpet. Not a big crisis, but it is hard for me to sleep easy when he isn’t in his bed.
About nine-thirty I woke him up and asked him for his teeth. He gave them without questioning, and this preempted one big hassle of the bedtime routine–helping him clean his teeth. Then just now at almost eleven I finally woke him up and convinced him that it was time to go to bed. As I was putting him to bed I realized that tomorrow is garbage day, so I need to get everything ready to put on in the morning, and I told Grandma not to worry about the kitchen because I would straighten up the kitchen.
I will do those two things and then finally head off to bed myself.
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