My Eyes are Burning!!

3/12/08
MY EYES, MY EYES,…I CAN FEEL THE BURNING, I CAN'T SEE.

What is wrong you say? My eyes are developing scar tissue as I type since this morning my sister and I were summoned to help my grandmother take a bandage off her head….after her shower…which she insisted that we sit in on to make sure that she did it right…. Yes this was our thought too…after 92 years of showering…is there a worry you would get it wrong? But this is the way it is with my sweet grandmother…which she really is…most of the time. But she worries about everything, and with this, just another worry session that she would do something wrong in the shower and would somehow…I don’t know, I guess explode or something.

So there we were, my sister and I sitting dutifully with our two year olds, trying to keep them from beating each other over the head with rare, antiques in her living room…which by the way, my grandmother always protests “There is nothing they can hurt here” to which my sister and I always politely respond: (while removing the 400$ crystal candy dish top from the sticky fingers that are holding it in throw position) …”Um, yeah, its been a while since mom was 2 huh?!?” (This is my mothers mother.)

We hear our summons, my grandmother, frantically yelling for us to check and see if she has wet down the bandage on top of her head enough to get it off.

Us: “Do you want a towel to cover up?”
Her: “No, I am 92 what do I have to worry about”
Us: Um we are more worried about this lovely memory burned into our brain than yours, since you are likely to forget it in the next ten minutes! (We really didn’t say this, My sister and I are actually good granddaughters, but we did look at each other and instantly understood that is what we were thinking.)

We dutifully got to work at un-sticking her bandage from her hair on the top of her head while skillfully avoiding eye contact with our grandmothers naked body dripping in the shower…which come on folks, I am not being mean here, but lets face it…gravity is not always kind to us as we age…and there were parts that were down to other parts that just…well, It was just NOT ok. (I know that I am securing my place in hell for this story. But I promise we are good grand daughters.)

Us: “we are trying not to hurt you, are you sure you don’t want a towel, aren’t you cold?”
Her: “No I am fine, can you see the scar?”

Us: “Yeah it isn’t too bad” By which we mean “OMG I have to get the heck out of here before I barf in the tub and add more bad memories to this entire affair”

My grandmother had a small cancerous growth on the top of her head, which from what it looks like, they scooped out with an ice cream scooper and then plopped a bandage on top and left it to us to look at and take care of. I know that this isn’t fair because the Dr was wonderful and really did do a good job, but looking at this hole in her head, sort of made me realize why I never went to medical school…well that and the fact that beer was a better friend to me in college then my books were…but that is neither here nor there.

But set your minds at ease, all was ok, the bandage was removed, the body got covered in a robe eventually, AND we managed to keep my son, who at this point has a fairly un-healthy (or healthy according to my husband) obsession with “Boobahs,” out of the bathroom while we worked on my grandmother in the shower. I really was concerned about this, especially after his experience with the man boobs in his Swimming lesson, that he wouldn’t stop talking about, and clearly was traumatized by. And while the scar tissue on my eyes will not last as long as the memory of my grandmothers “boobahs” in the shower, the end result was her feeling secure and taken care of…and in the end that is what is important…right?....RIGHT?????