And just 10 minutes later, I met him again.
Except it wasn’t Nikita.
It was Robik, her husband, who died in the early noughties.
It was Igor (the guy I dated 13 years ago).
It was someone she had seen in her dreams last night.
And anyway, she’s already met Nikita. She guessed three years ago that we were together. I mean, with Seryozha, isn’t that Seryozha? And how is Nikitin’s daughter?
Over the past 4 days, my grandmother has had a sharp qualitative deterioration in dementia.
Her illness has been progressing for the last 5 years. It’s like someone is siphoning personality out of a person. The breakdown of neural connections, which can literally be felt. It’s scary and fascinating at the same time.
Apart from the rare aggressive attacks when she was completely out of her mind and out of control, on the whole she was more or less thinking. But the fact that it was “thinking”, I realized only now, when she basically stopped giving out anything meaningful. Do you know these strange captchas where two words that are completely random and not coordinated with each other turn out to be next to each other by the will of the algorithm? Something like “triangle is white” or “T-shirt is covered”. This is my grandmother’s speech now. The sentences literally crumble before they reach the end. You look into her eyes. She’s staring at you intently. But behind the effort is emptiness. My grandmother, who was strong–willed, active, and ready to bend the whole world to suit herself, is no longer there.
We saw a psychiatrist today. Well, what do you want, dementia, 85.
Yes, everything can literally collapse in one day, that’s fine.
Yes, it can basically roll back. Or it may not roll back. Buy these medicines in addition to what you drink.
A week ago, she was subtracting in her mind from five to twelve and getting -7. A year ago, she was left alone for a few days at the summer cottage, even under the supervision of a neighbor.
It’s a pity that Nikita and my grandmother will never really get to know each other.