My grandmother drinking a margarita for the first time in her life
“This man started chatting me up in the parking lot,” my grandmother called to tell me this past Saturday. “Man, did he like to talk a lot. He’s 87 too.”
I wasn’t sure where she was going with this.
“Anyway, he asked me out for dinner.”
My grandmother and I talk several times a week. Over the past year, our conversations have taken a melancholic turn. Two years ago, her partner, Lionel, a tiny, spitfire of a Jew, just like my grandmother, was admitted to a home for people with Alzheimer’s. Lionel was not my grandmother’s greatest love- in truth, I’m not sure she’s ever truly been in love- but he was a companion. She had grown dependent on his presence, and vice versa.
“I told him that I couldn’t go, but he gave me his number.”
“What?! Why did you say you couldn’t go?!”
My grandmother has a tendency to miss out on the great joys in life. She was raised to be a martyr by martyr. In fact, when her second (more…)