Child sexual abuse: Goodbye Grandma

"You're the light, you're the night,

You're the colour of my blood

You're the cure, you're the pain

You're the only thing I wanna touch

Never knew that it could mean so much, so much."

- "Love Me like You Do" by Ellie Goulding.

Grandma slept curled up, like an ancient Peruvian mummy on the armchair. Masked emotions, death in sleep.

I was nervous yesterday about meeting her after so long.

"Are we visiting Grandma tomorrow?" I asked my mother repeatedly, like a tiresome child. "Yes, Padmé!" my mother exclaimed.

In my childhood, I had blamed Grandma for what had happened to me. I had thought angrily: If only you had "served" Grandpa like you should have, as a dutiful wife, then none of this would have happened! I paid with my childhood, Grandma!

I wanted answers. It was naive thinking that visiting her in her current state of dementia would present any. It was like a dangerous game of skating circles on ever thinning ice. What good was this exercise, however possibly tempting it may sound?

Grandma woke up and sat there, pasty-faced, an oversized Victorian doll. She folded her fingers back and forth. She was worried.

"Have I bathed?" she whispered. She had a Lady Macbeth-esque obsession with cleanliness.

"You have, Mother!" my aunt replied, exasperated. Turning to me, my aunt explained, "It's the first thing she wants to do when she wakes up. But I had bathed her earlier this morning. She took a nap and now she thinks it's morning again."

"Don't you remember?" my mother interjected. "She used to bathe many times a day when we were young! She's reverting to her behaviour when she was younger."

My grandmother will be 91-years-old this year. She has no recollection of who we are, save the two daughters taking care of her.

I felt a brief flutter of hope when she looked at me with faraway eyes, "Have you just arrived?" Did she mean me, from far away? Did she realise I had come from far away?

No, she did not recognise me.

Her daughters swop stories of what it was like growing up with her.

"I had to go to the market, to buy food," my aunt, the youngest of the lot, recalled.

"I had to go too," my mother said. "I remember, Mom gave me a dollar once, and she told me to get fish, eggs and bean sprouts. And I thought, how on earth will I get all that food with so little money? But I did!"

"What kind of eggs were they?" my aunt asked, curious.

"Chicken eggs. I don't know how I managed. I'd show the shopkeepers the money and they took a bit and gave me stuff, and hurried me along. I went to get the bean sprouts last as they were the cheapest. They cost about five to ten cents then. But when I got home, Mom got angry with me: 'Where did you get all this from? Did you steal??' I was at a loss for words!"

The women hooted with laughter. Their childhood wasn't easy although my aunt had the easiest time of them all.

It's funny. They say that even after someone has died, you'd learn many things about them still.

My grandmother is still alive but the gulf between us lies unbridged by the weight of memories past. She is no longer of this world.

I have to leave this town soon.

Goodbye, Grandma, goodbye.

Read part 21 here.

Read part 20 here.

Read part 19 here.

Read part 18 here.

Read part 17 here.

Read part 16 here.

Read part 15 here.

Read part 14 here.

Read part 13 here.

Read part 12 here.

Read part 11 here.

Read part ten here.

Read part nine here.

Read part eight here.

Read part seven here.

Read part six here.

Read part five here.

Read part four here.

Read part three here.

Read part two here.

Read part one here.