crazy

I didn't realize it until this morning but, other than Michelle's birthday Saturday night, this was a wholly depressing weekend.

It started out with Gelo's mother's wake Friday night. I almost hate attending wakes with my friends because whenever we get together, no matter what the circumstances, we have a good time. Normally, this would be a wonderful thing but not at a wake and I feel awful standing outside the room laughing when someone is lying in a coffin mere feet away. Of course, we weren't really disruptive and I can't remember minding that at the wakes I have attended over the past two years or so. It helps sometimes to get the person's mind off of where they are and what they're doing. I can't even fathom how Gelo was feeling that night but I have to imagine that I'd want my friends to keep being my friends and acting like my friends, and not stand around staring at me morosely. Although, at the burial Saturday morning, when one of Gelo's sister's friends broke into "Wind Beneath my Wings" just before we stepped away from the coffin for the last time... well, I shed more than a few tears then. It's that moment that kills me the most (and the Bette Midler song didn't help)... the moment when it is the last time you are seeing that person. You're going home... and that's it. Your life continues, you're expected to move on and just live the way you did a week before. It's possibly one of the worst moments a person can experience in their life. You know, other than torture in a foreign country or something.

To build off of that happy paragraph, Sunday afternoon, my mother, father, Ricky and I drove out to visit Mema (my mom's mom) in a psychiatric hospital. She's always been depressed, my whole life she's had ups and downs, but since my grandfather passed away in October of 2006, her downs have been much lower than they ever were. She was very depressed right after it happened (as we all were... and I still am sometimes, at random moments of my life, like when Derek Jeter got the most hits in Yankee Stadium. Papa was a rabid Yankee fan.) but then, it seemed for a while like she would be all right. She got back out and started taking part in her community again. She even had a "companion" which is just what young people call old people's boy/girlfriends because it's gross to imagine people over sixty-five doing it... although I don't think they were doing it... ANYWAY, she was doing okay. Then, a while ago, the depression all came rushing back. She's been taking a bunch of different medications and sometimes, she wouldn't be eating. A woman from some agency was even going to the house to spend time with her a few hours a day, which helped a little, but in the end, she had to check herself into this hospital so her medication could be monitored. She's only supposed to be there for a week, which would end this Tuesday, but she doesn't look in any condition to leave from what I saw yesterday.

First of all, the smell of the place made me want to run. It's a normal hospital smell I guess. People who haven't showered, different types of medication... and since this was the geriatric ward, this was all coupled with the generic small of "old". You know what I'm talking about. And it was horrible because there are certain people who seriously belong there, like my grandmother's roommate, who is just propped up in the day room all day long in front of the TV (on which they can't change channels) and then changed out of her clothes at night and put to bed. Mema does not belong there. This is the woman who did a pole dance a few years ago at a party she and my grandfather attended. She is funny and smart and... ugh, it's so frustrating. I watched my other grandmother suffer with dementia until she was a shell of a human being... until I was actually HAPPY when she died, which still makes me feel like shit but I didn't want to look at her like that anymore. I wanted her to be free of that stupid body and actually be herself again wherever our souls go when we die. And I don't want Mema to go out like she did, laying in a hospital bed with someone changing her clothes for her. That's not who she is, and it wasn't who Nanny was either but I know that Mema can pull herself out of it.

I guess Depression is as much a disease as Dementia and I shouldn't assume that it will be easy for Mema to just turn around and be her old self again. My grandfather always used to tell Mema she better die first because she wouldn't be able to do anything without him. It wasn't as bad as it sounds, because clearly, it's true. I just wish there was something I could do to help her. Something besides sitting in the hallway of the hospital (because you can't go inside the rooms with visitors), waiting for my father to come back with the water he smuggled in from Wawa (because you can't bring any outside food or drink into the place).

And now I'm depressed. Happy Monday. Seriously, if no one else could get sick or die for, like, two good years, I'd really appreciate it.