January 9, 2002

Vignettes of the last few weeks:

Driving to St. Catharines, along the Queen Elizabeth Way (known as the QEW, or "Queen E"), we pass the county line and see that someone has surgically altered the Welcome To... sign on the side of the highway by blacking out the first part of the letter N in Niagara. We thus entered The Regional Municipality of Viagara.

Lisa's grandfather went into the hospital December 19th to have his knees replaced. Once we arrived in St. Catharines, we would go visit him in the hospital every day or so. I'm not fond of hospitals, especially the Hotel Dieu, where he was for his operation and recovery. I've been to that hospital in the past as both a visitor and patient. There's just something about the place that exudes a general malaise, over and above being a place where sick people are. Maybe it's haunted; who knows?

Boxing Day, before going over to Mom's for the annual supper, we had brunch with Lisa's paternal relatives. That visit went quite well, despite our not having seen them since 1994 at her Dad's funeral. After brunch, we all drove over to the senior citizen residence where Lisa's paternal grandmother is staying. She suffers from Alzheimer's Disease and as such lives in the wing of the home with others in a similar state. As we entered that wing a little old lady, friendly as can be, started talking to Lisa. She was coherent at first, then without missing a beat, slipped into Dutch and continued talking. After a few sentences she reverted back to English, speaking about squirrels or something. She then trailed off and wandered away.

Lisa's grandmother's Alzheimer's is fairly advanced. She only recognises the grandfather and her son, and even then that spark of recognition will flicker out after a few minutes. She's developed quite the potty mouth too, but she'll chuckle about it in her more lucid moments. She was shining Grandpa on at one point. She kept looking over at me and giving me an exaggerated wink as if I was in cahoots with her.

I can only hope than when I'm a senior citizen that I still have my wits about me and that I'm physically able to take care of myself. I can't imagine being strapped into a wheelchair so I won't hurt myself or others, without a consistent thought pattern running through my mind. That's just a shell of who the person used to be.

We got the White Christmas after all. The same lake effect snow that buried Buffalo dropped about 6 inches of the stuff on St. Catharines starting Christmas Day and through the 27th. Just enough to make everything look lovely; not enough to cause chaos.

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