Are you allowed to be happy that someone has died?
Society tells us to feel despair, but sometimes we don’t.
I was about ten when she flooded the bottom floor of her home. She left the kitchen tap running overnight; an understandable mistake. She had to have been around 75…76. Chalk it up to old age. These things happen.
The second occurrence, in less than a year, was cause for concern.
A visit to a specialist informed us that Nana had a brain tumor that had been growing for an estimated 25 years.
Nana lived for another ten or twelve years post-surgery, but I won’t pretend they were happy years. The surgery only slowed her steady decline into dementia, rather than stopping it. Within a year or two Pops decided they needed to downsize from two- to one-story and be closer to family shortening the 160-mile distance between us to a mere five.
Over time, her memory issues grew even bigger, along with developing paranoia and anger. She’d hide jewelry and other valuables out of fear that Pops would gift them to the multitudes of women with whom she accused him of having affairs. This led to many arguments, as she’d then lose the jewelry because she couldn’t remember where she’d hidden it.
