Nobody likes to be old

I have been thinking of writing a new post for several weeks, but could not get my lazy hands and brain to write. Today is probably a good day to change.

For the past couple of months, my grandmother has been in a state of delirium. At least that is what my brother think it is. From what I can gather, delirium is not an illness; it is a mental condition where the patient is confused. Depending on how severe the underlying illness is, the confusion ranges from mild hallucination to severe schizophrenia.

I was not aware of grandma's situation until a week before Chinese New Year. It was a Monday. My mother was skipping her work for half day to take care of housework while we wait for my aunt to come. While I was waking grandma up at her bedside, I stepped on a puddle of liquid. It was yellowish. I suspected it to be urine, but I did not alert my mother as she was busy.

30 minutes later, my aunt arrived and was shocked to find out about the puddle. I overheard her asking grandma about it, and grandma explained that she was not feeling well and unable to hold her urine, hence the puddle at bedside. Once, mother called me from office asking me to give grandma some medication inside the fridge. Aunt told me that grandma had been talking nonsense. I still did not know what happened.

Few days later, my parents revealed to me that, on a trip to the hospital weeks before, grandma was diagnosed with urinary tract infection. UTI is one of the causes for delirium. This explains the urine puddle, the strange shoo-ing sound grandma has been making when she looked out of the windows of her room, and some other weird nonsense she has been talking about. Father said she told him once that she saw some trucks outside our house and believed them to be Japanese troops.

Grandma is nearly 90 years old now, which means she has been through the Japanese occupation of Malaya back in 1930s. I think words cannot describe the horror she has seen or felt. It must have been so traumatic that she is having hallucinations of Japanese troops outside our house. Apart from that, she also claimed to see some weird people with long teeth, which I think resemble the traditional Chinese zombies. Late at night, she would wake up complaining about some "mosquito" buzzing around in her room, and that she would use the insecticide to kill the imaginary pest.

Fortunately, delirium and the underlying UTI is not permanent. The medicine mother instructed me to give grandma was an antibiotic, leftover from 2 years ago when grandma was having the same condition. Now, after about 2 months, grandma's condition is slowly improving, although she still warns me and my cousin (who comes to visit her almost every week) about the long, dark road cutting through oil palm estate leading to our home. Throughout the day, she will never fail to peer out from any window, or take a peek from inside her room through the windows, or check to see if the front door is locked, or close any curtain. God knows what she sees. From the look of her weary and pale face, from the way she curls up in the curtain while looking out of the windows, I can only imagine it to be something horrific.

During weekdays, my aunt will come and take care of and provide company to her. She goes back to her house every Friday night, except on special occasions. Without my aunt, grandma looks lonely. She and the rest of the family do not share a lot common things to talk about. My 2nd aunt will occasionally call to check on her. Apart from that, she seldom talks. Daily activities include going to the toilet, using the foot massager in living room, folding clothes, talking on phone, and sleeping.

Nobody likes to be old. By being old, we are haunted by numerous diseases and illnesses, sometimes life-threatening. We are haunted by regrets, if any, memories of loved ones, and loneliness. Our body weakens; our mind deteriorates. We count to our unforeseeable demise, waking up every time to breathe a sigh of relief that we are still able to wake up.

After all, at the end of the journey, all we ever wanted was just to live and see another day.