Tuesday Is Fine

My grandmother asks where Grandad is about four times an hour. He died in 2019. I've told her that. I told her at the funeral and she cried like it was the first time, because it was, and then twenty minutes later she asked where he was. So I stopped. The staff at the home have a name for it. Therapeutic something. You go with her reality. If she thinks it's 1988 and she needs to get the dinner on, you say the dinner's sorted, and she relaxes. If she asks where Grandad is, you say he's at the allotment, and she says, "That man and his beans," and she's happy. It works. It works the way a painkiller works. My brother won't do it. He says it's lying. He says she's a grown woman who spent her whole life telling us to tell the truth and it's not our place to decide she can't handle it now. He visits less than I do, and when he does, he tells her, and she cries, and he sits with her while she cries, and he thinks that's respect. I think it's cruelty with a good conscience. We've had the argument. We don't have it any more. Here's what I actually do, since neither of us is telling the whole truth about it. Some days I say the allotment. Some days I say he's popped out. Some days, when she's sharp, when there's a look in her eye that's her and not the illness, I say, "He's gone, Nan. A while ago now. It was peaceful," and I watch to see what she does with it. Sometimes she says, "I know that," in a voice like I've insulted her. Sometimes she says, "Oh," very small, and we sit with it, and I hold her hand, and in a bit she asks about the cat, who is also dead, and I say the cat's fine. I don't have a rule. That's what I've worked out. My brother has a rule and the staff have a rule and both rules are for the person applying them, not for her. The truth on a bad day is a thing that happens to her over and over with no memory of the last time, which is not what truth is for. The lie on a good day is me deciding she's less than she is. The only honest thing I can do is look at her and guess, every single time, and get it wrong some of the time, and live with that.

Last Tuesday she was sharp. She looked at me and said, "You've got his chin." "I know." "He's dead, isn't he." "Yes." "I thought so." She looked out of the window. "I keep forgetting. Is that awful?" "No." "It's a bit awful." "It's a bit awful," I said, and she laughed, actually laughed, and said, "Well, Tuesday's fine, then," which I didn't understand and didn't ask her to explain. Twenty minutes later she asked where he was. I said the allotment. I'm not going to tell you that was right. I've stopped thinking there's a right. There's Tuesday, and whoever she is when I walk in, and whoever I can bear to be.