Grandma

My Grandma Ella (my mother's mother) has had bad health for quite a while (she can't walk properly and has heart problems) and in addition she has a form of Alzheimer's. She keeps forgetting or imagining things to the point where she has sometimes hallucinations of people who aren't there and stuff like that. When she was healthier, she could be quite an annoying person since she talked ALL THE TIME and always about the same topics and always hysterically, but with the amount of medicamentation she takes these days she's become pretty quiet.

Since she can't live alone anymore, my mother has decided that she'll live with us now.

Now our flat is really small. It's not meant for more than two and a half people (a half in our case being two cats), especially not someone who can't move properly and has problems with tight spaces. Also, my Grandma has a history of getting on people's nerves to the point where they never, ever want to see her again.

Naturally, I was wary about this solution.

They arrived a few hours ago, my Grandma has since watched some TV and had dinner with us. And it's... nice. Really nice. I'm so used to living with just one parent that one more person seems like a huge difference, like suddenly it's so much more like a family. And though my Grandma is helpless and old and her mind is slowly disintegrating as her illness progresses, she's still a person and can be quite sweet. In a month or so we'll get a larger apartment and right now I have the feeling that this could really work. Before she arrived, I thought that somehow we might manage it and live through it without losing our last nerve. Now I'm glad she's here.

Grandma

My Grandma Ella (my mother's mother) has had bad health for quite a while (she can't walk properly and has heart problems) and in addition she has a form of Alzheimer's. She keeps forgetting or imagining things to the point where she has sometimes hallucinations of people who aren't there and stuff like that. When she was healthier, she could be quite an annoying person since she talked ALL THE TIME and always about the same topics and always hysterically, but with the amount of medicamentation she takes these days she's become pretty quiet.

Since she can't live alone anymore, my mother has decided that she'll live with us now.

Now our flat is really small. It's not meant for more than two and a half people (a half in our case being two cats), especially not someone who can't move properly and has problems with tight spaces. Also, my Grandma has a history of getting on people's nerves to the point where they never, ever want to see her again.

Naturally, I was wary about this solution.

They arrived a few hours ago, my Grandma has since watched some TV and had dinner with us. And it's... nice. Really nice. I'm so used to living with just one parent that one more person seems like a huge difference, like suddenly it's so much more like a family. And though my Grandma is helpless and old and her mind is slowly disintegrating as her illness progresses, she's still a person and can be quite sweet. In a month or so we'll get a larger apartment and right now I have the feeling that this could really work. Before she arrived, I thought that somehow we might manage it and live through it without losing our last nerve. Now I'm glad she's here.