The Chinese Warrens

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...