Grandpa has, as I may have said before, taken to wandering around when no one is directly observing him, and quickly eating as much as he can before he gets caught. In order to curtail this behavior we purchased child locks for the cabinets and the refrigerator. Grandpas has been completely dumbfounded by everything from chairs to shoes for months but, somehow, he was instantly able to figure out the mechanism that unlocked the refrigerator seals. It’s quite amazing how adept he is when his lizard brain is doing the driving. Our solution to this was to make a fake system of complex locks, which don’t actually lock, and hang them across the seal mechanisms. So far that has been one step further than grandpa can noodle in his impaired state.
He has gained so much weight since grandma died that neither mom or I can lift him anymore. If he keeps getting away with these binges he’ll eventually come to a point where he can’t get up out of a chair, which he’s already perilously close to achieving. He is now endlessly annoyed that only apples and oranges are offered up when he asks for cake, cookies, or ice cream. Generally if he is offered an apple he says “I’m not much of an apple person.” If he can’t get ahold of anything else however, he will eat and entire bag of them while you’re not looking. Which we learned the hard way by not hiding all the other apples one day. An apple is a pretty decent healthy snack. An entire bag, not so much.
I honestly don’t care all that much if grandpa eats himself to death. He exists in a state of seemingly perpetual misery. I would just as soon see an end to it. If that’s the end he chooses he’s earned it as far as I’m concerned. That said, I know what will actually happen. He’ll gain 400 pounds and live to be 100 years old with everyone struggling to move around his massive body, getting injured, while he only seems to grow stronger…
Sooooo… I’ll just keep offering him apples when he asks for cookies a hundred times a day. At this point the only way to get him to lose weight is to restrict his diet, but he gets more petulant and miserable the more you do it, which is exhausting. Not physically, but emotionally. For me at least every part of the kind portion of my brain says “just let him have a fucking cookie. Everything sucks for him all the time.” But you can’t be irresponsible like that. There are other factors to consider. It’s already difficult to bathe him and a 400 pound version of him would be nearly impossible to clean. Guh…

The other day I had my headphones sitting on the counter after dinner. They are over the ear, bright red, ones. Grandpa is up wandering around, looking for things he can graze on because he’s already forgotten he just ate dinner. He snatches up one side of the headphones and goes to jam it in his mouth. Just before he does he quickly asks “Are you gonna eat this doughnut?” To which I reply “Grandpa, those are my headphones.” At which point he notices all the other stuff stuck to the earpad and laughs. “Yeah it sure is.” He says, chuckling. “I guess I’m not all here today.” He got his actual dessert after that.

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Posts authored by Jackie

The Times Between 18.