As if I needed something else to feel bad about...

...Today, I went to see my Grandmother for the first time since Christmas, and the first time in her current nursing home.

I say 'current' because, having visited today, I all but insisted to my mother that she couldn't stay there.

The place she's in is actually quite lovely... I mean, in a way, it's at the nice end of 'basic hotel accommodation', with a communal lounge, all meals provided, weekly visits from a hairdresser, on-site nursing and doctors on call 24/7, a very pretty garden which must be wonderful in summer... But she's the only (English) woman there and, with her mind and memory the way they are, she's not adjusting well to the situation.

Grandmother herself reminds me of the last part of Shakespeare's 'The Seven Ages of Man':

Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Not only is she being eroded without and within - by age and by Alzheimer's - but she is very much in the throes of second childishness. It's not hard to compare her behaviour to that of my 2 1/2 year old niece. Both are confused at the comings and goings around them, resentful of perceived 'intrusions', claiming ownership of everything within reach, and making it very plain when they've had enough.

At several points during our - mercifully brief - visit, she wondered who everyone else was, what they were doing there, etc. She was visibly angry at people "arriving unannounced" or "without asking anyone first" and "taking over the place", and just couldn't process the explanation that the other people were arriving to visit their relatives, didn't need to ask. She obviously isn't fully aware of where she is, because she complained that she was "paying for it all". Anyone passing by would be subjected to the same intense, distrustful scrutiny, no matter how many times they passed by, because she's no longer able to remember any of them from one moment to the next. More often than not, by the time my mother had finished reminding her who these people were, Grandmother could not remember why she had been given a list of names.

In the next room, one of the more troublesome tenants - thrown out of another nursing home because they couldn't cope - would call out "Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello!" whenever left alone for a few moments and, when he wasn't complaining that he couldn't hear anything (until his hearing aid was adjusted by the only nurse on duty this Bank Holiday Monday) he'd repeatedly ask when his daughter would be coming. Invariably, the answer was "tomorrow", but it sounds as though everyone's telling him that every day, and it became painfully obvious that she never actually shows up.

Should one hope that his dementia is so severe that he doesn't know how many 'tomorrows' have passed? That's too big a question for me to answer.

She looks awful, too... small and frail, rings rattling on bony fingers with skin that looks like ancient parchment. She's still able to move under her own steam - shuffling off to investigate the noises from the kitchen to ensure they weren't wrecking her best china (which isn't even there) - and even pulling the armchairs about a bit. Once she's engaged in a conversation, she almost seems normal... but the discomfort, frustration, anger and fear are always lurking beneath the surface. She's skipping on some of her medication, too - spitting pills and half-chewed calcium tablets into tissues and stashing them in her handbag. My mother collected about a dozen, rooting through that bag. I suggested she speak to the management about having the pills broken up and added to her food.

There's another nursing home nearby that, at first glance, seems much better - more women, more lively and inclusive - but Grandmother was apparently quite nasty about it after a brief visit for lunch at the end of last week. She's still with-it enough to be very two-faced - told the ladies already resident that she'd be delighted to see them again, but told her daughter that she didn't want to go back there as soon as they were out of the door.

Since I never made the time to visit my other Grandmother while she was ailing in hospital, I needed to visit this one - partly to make up for my previous negligence, and partly just to look for some glimmer of hope that she wasn't as bad as she seems to be. Even having visited her today, though, I feel like the worst kind of bastard, because I haven't seen her since Christmas and, before that, I'd barely seen her since the previous Christmas.

Hard enough to see someone wasting away through old age... Much worse to see them ravaged by Alzheimer's and "sans everything".