During the holiday season my grandmother took a nasty spill and hurt her knee something awful. It was swollen and purple and pretty scary looking. Battle axe that she is, she was quite feisty in the emergency room telling everyone that she was NOT going to stay here and did they used to live in South Dakota. Like all the women in my line, she tends to get along better with men than women and she was given a male nurse. Sometimes she squints at me and wonders who I am and the first three times I say, “Gramma. I‘m one of Patty’s girls.” it doesn’t really register. After that, she is the spitfire I know, love, and will probably emulate someday.

So long as I don’t emulate some of her roomates at her assisted living center.

Actually, she hasn’t been back to that place since the spill and it’s difficult to admit, but she’ll be in the long term care much longer. She’s been there ever since and my mom knows she’s got to arrange to get it cleaned out and deal with her mother’s things. It’s been a struggle for her and I know I don’t support her as much as I should. But yesterday she asked for help in moving things out and she, Morgan and I loaded up two cars full of stuff to take to my mom’s house so she could begin sorting through it. It’s nasty necessary work and we were all business.

Some of the people who live there tend to hang out in the lobby wondering if guests are there for them and can talk your ear off. Amusing little people, for sure. Once, for example, when mom was wheeling out a cart an older gentleman in a wheelchair (not really a wheelchair, but those motorized carts of terror that make me think they’re not going to make that turn..oh, no…you’re not gonna…oh! whew! you made it!) pretended like she ran over his foot.

“Ouch! OH! AAAARRGGGHH!”

“I didn’t get you. You’re teasing me.” mom called his bluff and we all laughed.

After moving several loads out to the car we saw another lady sitting in a cart of terror at the end of the long hallway to my gramma’s room and mom broke some of the tension of the day by whispering to me.

“See that lady in the cart right there? Earlier when I came up and unlocked the door she was in her room as I walked by and she didn’t have any pants on. Nothin’, and I mean NOTHIN’, on her nether regions.”

We laughed perhaps a little uncontrollably before reality hit me and I groaned, “So that’s what we have to look forward to, is it? Someday I’ll be sitting in my room at a home like this and a total stranger will see my lower half exposed and tell their friends about the naked 90-year old and they’ll giggle about it. Great.”

“That’ll be kind of fun, won’t it?”

“Actually, yes.”

Wherever you are, future person I will flash, I hope you are as amused by it as I currently am.