The Chinese Warrens

10/27/15 I've stopped calling Golden Age to let them know that I'm coming.  Sometimes I have to say it several times, and it often doesn't matter. Sometimes when we pick him up for dinner, they've already fed him.  And it's always too much, according to my grandfather. "I just can't eat that much anymore," he always says. I walk in the door and Connie tells him that I'm here. He starts to turn around and I lean over the chair to put my hand on his shoulder. "Hi, Ba," I say. "Do you want to go out to lunch with me?" "Sure!" he answers brightly. This is better than the last time I came over to pick him up for the afternoon this past Friday. That day, when I came over, everyone was watching TV and my grandfather had his head down, looking at his hands.  He did not look up when I came over, so I put my hand over his so he could see me. He looked up, his eyes teary.  I told him I was there to take him over to my...

When I went with my grandfather and my parents to visit my grandmother in rehab on May 3rd, I brought a drawing pad for him and some watercolor crayons.  He used to always draw with me and was a wonderful artist.  He sat at the edge of her bed and I sat in a chair next to him. I asked him to draw something and he just looked at me confused. "I don't know what to draw," he said. "How about... a dog?" I asked. He took the pad and stared at it for a while, the crayon in his hand. "I can't," he said. "You were always the artist." What? He had to be kidding.  My grandfather used to be able to draw and make anything and everything.  I remembered one time, he carved a beautiful Chinese New Year lion out of a bar of soap for a school project where I was supposed to carve something.  Now he couldn't even draw a dog? He handed the pad and crayon back to me shaking his head.  I sighed and just started sketching some orchids that wer...

I haven't really written much about my grandparents lately.  Life just gets away from me with a baby.  A lot has happened since I wrote here regularly. There is a lot of video footage to go through from several years ago from the dinners with my grandparents where I asked them to tell me stories. My grandparents' great grandchild was born on New Year's Eve 2013.  At least my grandmother doesn't have to ask me if it's twins anymore. This past December, my grandmother fell and fractured her pelvis. My grandfather couldn't help her up and she ended up in the hospital, and then rehab again. Then my grandfather developed severe edema from his horrible diet and he could no longer walk while my grandmother was in the hospital, and he too ended up in the hospital.  My parents decided this was "the event." They had to go to a care facility. When my grandfather got out of the hospital, he didn't go home. He went to Golden Age, which is an elder car...

Went to visit my grandparents today with Joss. They really enjoyed him and Grandma even seemed a little more lucid than normal. "Stacey!" She said right away and recognized me. She and Ba took turns making faces at Joss and making him laugh.