lørdag 22. februar 2014

On Grandmothers and Alzheimer's



On a bad day it is hard for me to remember what she used to be like before her illness overtook her.

On a good day she becomes an adjusted version of herself again.
But the good days are the hardest. 

When my grandmother first started forgetting, we all dismissed it as something natural for a person her age. Flimsiness, we thought, gets more apparent as one ages. Accepting her having Alzheimer's was hard, but as her memories faded away, it became clear that it was something we could no longer ignore. 

Writing, thinking, talking and dealing with Alzheimer's is difficult. It is presented as an illness, yet it seems to affect every single patient differently, with no obvious way of treating or handling it. Sure there are general notions of measures to take when it has consumed a person - but there seems to be no pattern.

Anyway. I am no researcher or scientist or doctor. I am simply a granddaughter of an amazing woman who got sick. 

Let me tell you about her: 

My grandmother has many talents. She is incredibly bright, well-articulated and well read. She is an amazing cook - although her musicality probably exceeds her cooking skills. She has a beautiful singing voice and she speaks three languages. She is a good mother - maybe an even better grandmother (I guess people learn from their mistakes as parents), a hard worker and a compassionate human being. Her life has been hard, at times; marrying at 19, almost dying while giving birth to her first child (of three), keeping two cafeterias and a pastry shop for years, working an office job while simultaneously renting rooms to tourists in the summer, battling her husband's addiction to gambling // her life has not been easy. Despite all these things, my grandmother has always showered us with love, a love impossible to put into words, a deep, pure love. 

I have many memories of her before the Alzheimer's - but my favorite ones are these: sitting by her kitchen table as children, "helping" her make meatballs, surrounded by the heavenly smell of heavenly food, listening to her singing, laughing at her jokes. She has always had a great sense of humor, my grandmother. And there is nothing like the smell of a grandmother's food. It is made with such affection, love and life experience - it truly is unique; at least for a grandchild. 

It started with her re-telling the same stories. It then progressed to her forgetting important details of stories, and mixing them together. Two years ago, I remember her trying to tell me how she met my grandfather, but she couldn't quite figure it out. A year ago she told me she wanted to see her mother again, "Let's jump on the ferry and visit her", she said. "Your mother has passed on", I told her, in a soft voice. She looked at me with puppy eyes filled with surprise and fear "How do you know? Who told you?", she replied. After that, the rest of us agreed, as a family, to never tell her that some of her loved ones had passed away. There is no purpose in making her grieve time and time again. 

She is a different Maria now. Surrounded by old and new photographs where she hides her remaining memories, she lives her life, day by day. We share moments of laughter, tears, anger and frustration. We have found that music soothes her, and even though she can't remember song titles, as soon as we start singing, she immediately joins in, remembering all the lyrics. It really is remarkable. We cherish both her old and new self, adjusting our behavior on a day to day basis, depending on her mood when she wakes up. 

Sometimes I struggle trying to remember her as she was. But being a part of this stage of her life is a gift, even with the hard days, I treasure every moment I have with her. Throughout her life, she has been a devoted wife, and a loving mother and grandmother. The least we can do, is try to make it up to her. 

So.. to everyone who has been affected by Alzheimer's in one way or another. I know how you feel. But what I have realized through this, is that grieving is pointless. After admitting she was ill, I grieved. But there is a time to grieve, and it is not now. No matter how hard it can be, treat each day as a blessing. Life is a series of events, of phases we go through as human beings. Dementia can be a part of it. There's no recipe on how to deal with it - except living in the present and not in the past.



You can find some info on Dementia and Alzheimer's here.

Generation Z and Mobile Politics



Lately I've been thinking about my generation. Born in the late 80's, early 90's, we are torn between the worlds of the first mobile phones and the smartphones, between MS DOS and Snow Leopard, between casette, the CD, or the mp3. Riding the tube in London, observing how everyone clings to their iPhones, like Gollum to "his precious", playing games to make time pass quicker, blocking the rest of the world out with in-ear headphones as their barriers.

The fast evolution in technology has made me, the inbetweener, confused, frustrated and sometimes, worried. Social networking sites have created an alternate reality, alternate lives for people who sought them, and for those who didn't. The constant need to be online troubles me, as I am also captivated by it. Having an iPhone meant, for me, giving into a new lifestyle that has made me a passive, and an, at times, antisocial person. And I'm just starting to realize it.

Twitter and Facebook do make our lives easier, in some aspects, we can choose to stay in touch with people from our past, we can update friends and family all at once just by one click of a mouse, and we can upload photos and share our memories in public. Blogs act as online diaries where we pour our thoughts out and serve them to ourselves and everyone else on a silver platter, and YouTube serves as constant source of entertainment. The revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria were and are very dependent on these social networking sites, and their function in that aspect is appreciated. At the same time, their function in the Western World seems to be different. These sites serve as platforms where the Average Joe gets his 15 minutes of fame, by tweeting a funny sentence, a witty line, or re-tweeting other peoples comments, becoming increasingly aware of the fact that he needs to sell himself. These are merely my observations and comments, but having used Twitter more and more lately, as I am observing others in its use, I am also observing myself.

I started thinking about all this when I saw Black Mirror, the mini-series created by Charlie Brooker. The series addresses things that exist in our society as it is now: social networks and the internet, reality shows, "15-minutes of fame", and the obsession of constantly re-visiting the past, an obsession of such a scale that, through my eyes, seems unique to my generation. I will not draw a synopsis of the series, but Charlie Brooker's version of our present and future paints a worrying picture.

Being a "leftie" politically active teenager back in the day has left its traces, and while using the internet, I try being aware of its political effectiveness. Noticing the decrease of direct action - only in the last ten years - at least in Norway, leaves me wondering whether people that used to be politically active have taken to the Internet - continuing their "work" online. It seems we are living in a world that is increasingly being governed by money, banks and corporations, where politicians play their role convincingly at times.. still they seem powerless. Political decisions made in a single country count for nothing - when that country is being governed by higher institutions - by EUs and IMFs.

The question is, is the Internet a fair replacement for direct action? For protests and demonstrations?
On the other hand, maybe direct action never really made a difference. Maybe we never really stood a chance against the people that hold the power. I do respect the power that the Internet can have. But mostly, I worry. I worry that it acts like a veil, imposed by people that benefit from the lack of direct action - bringing more and more apathy to countries in the Western World that are as well off as Norway is. Who cares about the genocide in Syria when we can read about the 5:2 diet? What makes a more interesting read, how to get the perfect bum, or the continuing crisis in Greece?

Technology does have power. But it also distracts, it hypnotizes, it gets you to a point where you live your life virtually - forgetting about the real world - therefore giving the people in charge the room to do exactly as they please with your world. Of course I realize the irony of this piece of writing - published in the same virtual world that I have spent this post worrying about. Well.. When in Rome.