She who is gone....for now

My 76-year-old maternal grandma, Wan has been diagnosed with critical renal failure recently and we decided it was best for her to move in with my family so we could look after her better as opposed to her staying all alone in Raub.

Seeing as how I just finished my SPM 2 months ago and happened to be the most free one among all of us, I was given the unduly task to take care of her medications (19 tablets a day, round the clock!), do her weekly injections, bathe her at times, keep her company on nights when she feels scared, change her nightly diapers and monitor her high blood pressure.

At first I was kinda annoyed of having to do all these. Because hellooo, I'm a 17-year-old girl who just finished her SPM. I should be enjoying my freedom, going out with friends, get a job etc. But instead I'd been set to curfews, lesser play time and had to take care of my ailing grandma. Imagine my resentment of being put in such a situation.

But as time passed, I learned to embrace the circumstance. I mean, just how long more does she have to live? Might as well do the most for her while I still can. She told me numerous times that she would be helpless if I wasn't around her because I'm the one who knows what time she has to take her Bumetanide pills and how to inject Recormon into her stomach and which adult diapers she wears and how to operate that blood pressure machine for her.

That's when I knew all my nursing wasn't for nothing and that at least I'm doing something right. Though I gotta admit, I still complain about it sometimes (sorry, can't help it!).

And recently, she was admitted into HUKM for high blood pressure, low sodium content and whatever else that was related to renal failure. She's still in there. Unfortunately, she's not getting any better. She slowly slipped into her own shell, traumatized of having to go through the whole haemodialysis process. It's not easy.

She's no longer the Wan that chatters non-stop about everyone and everything else. The strong woman who has gone through years of hardship while taking care of 8 daughters on her own (my grandpa died 20 or so years ago) is slowly fading away. Her constant advice to me to always perform my prayers and to take care of myself has quietened down.

All I see now is a delirious woman who is wrapped in her own world. When I first saw her in her state of delirium few nights back, I couldn't help but cry by her bedside. She isn't the Wan that I've been taking care of for the last 2 months. And definitely not the Wan that I grew up knowing and loving. She has lost touch with her reality.

Is this what we will become one day? I pray to God, no.

And I pray the old Wan will return before it's too late. Insyaallah.

Frozen in Memories

As our eyes sweep over the picture and as it holds the strings in our hearts, we expect each other to always be the people in that picture. But people change. Because people aren't pictures.

Yet, just because the vista is changing, the smiles and laughters are muted and the moment is frozen in time, doesn't mean you don't want to remember the way the light shines on one certain day for one specific moment.

Sometimes, that's all you're left with in the end....