Friday, May 23, 2003  

Not that I want to be a gloomy-puss, but I'm going to have to talk about more bad news today. News from Hong Kong is that my grandfather (on my mother's side) has cancer, and it's apparently very serious -- serious enough that my mom is flying out tonight for Australia.

I really don't know what to think or how to feel. It hasn't really hit me yet. It's not that we're not close or anything... it's just that my paternal grandparents have either lived with me or very close to us, so comparatively speaking I'm not really too close to my maternal grandparents.

It's also been hard because he has Alzheimer's, and that obviously makes phone calls very difficult. He's my grandfather, and so... I kinda feel bad doing what everyone else does and "talking down" to him, you know, slowly and simply, as if he was a little kid... but yet when he forgets everything (not through any fault of his own, mind you, Alzheimer's just does that), you can't help it. And it makes you feel more distant because in effect, you're always starting every conversation from scratch. Sometimes he can't remember that I'm in London, or why, and so we have to go through that before we can even attempt anything further, or deeper.

And so now... it hasn't quite hit me. It's easier because he's quite literally halfway across the world, and in the absence of details (other than "he has cancer" and "it's bad"), well, you just don't want to imagine someone you love in that condition. When my mom arrives there sometime in the next day or so I should know more, and all I can do is hope for the best... or at the least, that it's as painless as something like this can possibly be.

Posted at 9:43 AM

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