-Living Will-

After spending the better part of Sunday morning researching dreams, (in particular the Non-REM type remembered precisely because of the shallow brevity of the restless sleep pattern) I had set off on a series of errands through the most crowded areas of town. Because of the human smog, I phoned my parents and told them not to go see my grandfather tonight. Since I was still in that area and the traffic wasn't improving, it only made sense that I see him through dinner.

And dinner it was; arriving at 5:00 is just soon enough to see the first dishes emerge from the kitchen, where I assume the workers all congregate with the exception of the one who drew the short straw and gets to play crowd control. Actually, the seniors in this wing are all to mentally incapacitated to cause too much trouble, although one wheelchairbound woman is filling the air with complaints none of us understand that only seem to make the other residents uncomfortable.

My grandfather is sitting at a strange table tonight, and I've only caught a few words from him that were intelligible. This usually means that he has the right balance on his medication: enough happy pills to make him pleasant around the help, and enough food to absorb the pills' propensity for rendering the patient unconscious.

That makes me think of the questions we ask ourselves every time we go there, all the time: is he happy? Does he know that something is missing from his mind? Does he still have an identity without memory?

I used to struggle with these things, but I don't any longer. It isn't easy for me to give up hypothetical questions, but between spoonfuls, my grandfather gazes at me through pin-prick pupils. Perhaps it is another side effect of the medication, but those eyes, devoid of the proper cues, tend to stymie my imagination. And there's just so many details to manage while we're there. There are bathrooms and sheets to inspect, clothes and grooming to evaluate, and teeth - false teeth to find and identify.

And erratic behavior to manage. Like Grandad's potential explosion when the Greek woman sitting at his table begins shouting in her native tongue and gesturing at his plate.

"??????! ??????, ??????. ??????, ??????, ??????."

She said a lot of other things I didn't catch, but I'd guess the cognate of a word that sounds like "patata" is potato. I had to look up the one that sounded like "aresko." It translates as please.

Later, I plod into his bathroom, expecting to find that he's missed the toliet seat again. I'm pleasantly suprised to find he has not, but I suppose he uses the planters now - at least, that's what the staff said. So there's no number two, but my shoes are sticking to the floor as in a second-run cineplex.

There's no soft drinks here, either.