Passages by Robert Griffith
	In life we are required to choose between many different paths. A decision made wrongly can lead to torturous years of indecision, and a decision in careful consideration may bring great victory. We all have to choose, somehow. When I make a decision, I have to weigh the consequences of my actions first, but sometimes, emotions get in the way. For three years I had watched my grandmother suffer from the ravages of Alzheimer's disease, caused by several small strokes and her multi-infarct dementia; three terms I had been painfully familiarized with over time. With each passing day more and more of her life died off. Her vast world went from cooking breakfast for everyone in the house on Saturday mornings, going to the grocery store every Thursday, and gardening in her maze of gardens throughout our yard; to concentrating on the glob of pureed greens held by an impatient nurse in front of her mouth. She no longer thought of the many famous recipes to share with her friends, but only of sleeping, eating, staring at the floor, and who knows what else. Conversations with her wilted, hollow form were limited to the occasional, "How are you?" Her arms would sit motionless next to her, and her legs held up by the recliner a nurse would force into position. At times, she would even seem to clear up, and for a young man who had always been dependant on her; it would seem that she could come home at any time. Then, watching her chest rise and fall as she took a shallow and ragged breath, exhaling gently, my hope would falter, then disappear into the rhythm of her wheezing. Sitting there beside her, my thoughts would be cluttered with images of a life before the despicable, and once misunderstood ailment, and instead, a life not filled with the pain that I suffered through. A fleeting glance of walking with her in Bransom's Grocery on a cool spring day many years ago, the smell of her pungent perfume radiating off of her warm, motherly form. Such thoughts often brought acrid tears of despair to my already sunken heart. Snapping out of my reverie, I would stare at her apprehensive smile and begin slowly weeping at the injustice of it all. Occasionally, the tears would overwhelm me, and I couldn't stop them from falling silently down my chin and to my chest. My grandmother, later on in her illness, would not understand my emotional outbursts. She broke my heart sitting there, not knowing who I was, or what she was, and I knew that her heart had been broken too. There is no way of telling what our souls were going through. Towards the end, but not quite to the point before her final decline, I was the only person she could recognize and call by name. She had raised me like her own son, and I had always loved her as my mother, even though I already had one of my own. Despite being so far apart compared to the 24-hour living arrangement we had had before, I still spent untold hours caring for her in the only way I could, with my love. In the last two months of her life, her health declined suddenly, and she became confined to a wheelchair because her legs could no longer process what her brain had always told her to do. Picking up a spoon and placing it in her mouth became a practice in futility as her mouth couldn't open and shut to chew, her jaws locked in pitiful clumsiness. Drinks became too hard to swallow without harsh coaxing by the nurses whom I never could trust. How I wondered, back then, what her thoughts must have been. Did she know or even try to understand what was happening to her? Did she look on the world as a prisoner confined to her chair, or did she look to the world as a child; wondering what the different colored pills were that I saw forced into her mouth in a never-ending process of humiliation and degradation. On December 22 of 1999, she was put into the hospice program, and something that still escapes me, comfort measures to ensure a peaceful, yet slow, death. She no longer had any outward control of her voluntary systems; all that remained were the involuntary actions of breathing and the beats that kept her eighty-one year old heart beating. Three days later, on Christmas Day, she improved slightly, and for a little while, at least, it looked as though the end might still be farther and farther away. We had escaped the inevitable once again, but as with a pot of water on a burning stove; all things must boil over. One day my mother asked me if I liked going to see my ailing grandmother at the nursing home. At first I was furious, desiring only to shatter out of my precious shell of sanity and throw my soul to the flames of death, but after further thought and bitterly honest self-reflection, I had to reply with a weak and sorrowful, "No." I did my best to tell her, over the following minutes, my thoughts, memories, and fears. Alzheimer's had silently stolen the person I called Grandma away from me. For the past several months, we had both hoped for her to succumb to her illness and slip away quietly. Her suffering, and ours, was too great to even relate. She then asked if I wanted to discontinue my visits to the nursing home, limiting my exposure to a fact of life that many people my age would thankfully never get to see. Searching my soul once again for the answer, a question arose in my mind, "Would that be the last time I would lay my eyes upon her?" Turning my head slightly, I gazed at an old, dusty picture sitting untouched on the sideboard, and I tried to think about what the best course of action would be. Turning over the possibilities of my decision, my grandma's voice arose in my mind and told me what I had so desperately needed to hear. I turned back towards my mother and saw her taunt face and unsteady eyes waver, and I told her that I didn't want to go to the nursing home to see Grandma anymore. I couldn't. I had given her my last goodbye. Inside I was torn up, wanting to scream at myself for abandoning Grandma, and I nearly changed my mind, nearly. As I looked at the dusty old picture again, seeing a portrait of another day linger in my imagination, my grandma in her wedding dress in 1946. I watched on as my mother went back to the nursing home several more times in the coming weeks, and each time I had to fight the voices in my mind that begged me to go. On January 22, 2000, Grandma died. I managed to get there just moments after she crossed the mortal threshold, but I held to my decision and told myself that I didn't want to see her. In the days following her death, right before her funeral, I asked my mother to slip a note and one of Grandma's favorite Australian pins, from back home, into her coffin. I live tortured by my decision, regretful of my action, but logic prevails, and life continues each day with the rise of a new world, and the dawn of another day. Even two years later, I still find myself wanting to tell Grandma many things. It is unimaginably difficult to keep from sobbing openly when I think about her. Since that day over two years ago her only brother and her last remaining sister have both surrendered to the pass of time; each going in their own way. This story, and all those that follow, are dedicated to Dulcie, Gennie, Bebbie, Grandma, and Johnny. Audrey Mercer, my Grandma, should be remembered as a woman who loved her family, loved gardening, loved cooking, and most of all, loved life to the fullest. Her memory lives on in many people, including her friends and family that live on to pass the torch to another generation.