I overhear two women, both looking in their mid-sixties or older, talking in the food court.
Woman #1: “I’m taking the grandkids to the dinosaur exhibit on the weekend.”
Woman #2: “I think dinosaurs really existed.”
Woman #1: “You do?”
Woman #2: “But they couldn’t talk to God.”
Woman #1: “Sure, they could!”
Woman #2: “How?”
[Woman #1] looks to the ceiling and… ROOOOOARRRS loudly! Everyone stops to stare. I thought I’d fall off my chair laughing at that insane discussion.
My sister was about four years old at the time, and my grandma was visiting. She’s going to drive us to my music lesson. My sister is in the bathroom, and my grandma is ready to leave and getting impatient.
Grandma: “Time to go, [Sister’s Name]!”
Sister: “Uh-huh.”
Grandma: “Hurry up!”
Sister: “Uh-huh.”
Grandma: “What’s taking so long?!”
Sister: *Snarkily.* “I’m in the bathroom, Grandma!”
Grandma doesn’t like the tone and demands:
Grandma: “What did you just say, young lady? I don’t appreciate that tone.”
Sister: “Uh… It must have come through the door wrong?”
I come from a very progressive family. LGBTQ acceptance has never been viewed as controversial in any way, shape, or form. My aunt is an out-and-proud lesbian, and no one in the family has ever had a problem with that for the entirety of her life since she started dating.
Then one day she starts dating [Girlfriend]. Now [Girlfriend] is abusive and downright mean. She is mean to my aunt in front of us, she is mean to the little cousins, and she cussed out my grandmother. But any time anyone says anything back to her, she claims homophobia. Saying that we are ignorant and are against her because we can’t accept having a lesbian in the family.
Finally, one day, she goes too far and insults my grandfather (who has passed) to my grandmother. This obviously upsets Grandma, and she tells [girlfriend] that what she said isn’t okay. [Girlfriend] has her usual counter that this is all homophobia, and no one would have a problem if she were a man.
Grandma: “You misunderstood, we dislike you because you are a c**t, not because you have one.”
Related:
At This Rate Never Pick A Fight With Any Old Woman…, Part 3
At This Rate Never Pick A Fight With Any Old Woman…, Part 2
At This Rate Never Pick A Fight With Any Old Woman…
My family has gathered for an Easter Sunday dinner. My family is considered somewhat religious thanks to my grandmother, who is an avid churchgoer. My grandpa is not a regular at their Church, but gets involved with the religious stuff when grandma insists.
Grandma: “[Grandpa], I think it would be good if you said thanks for the food before we start eating.”
Grandpa: “If you insist. We are gathered here to give thanks and remember the Easter bunny who died for our sins in that horrible horrible helicoptor crash…”
Cue the look of pure horror from the young cousins at the table, and a harsh tap on grandpa’s shoulder from grandma.
Later, I’m talking about it to an older cousin:
Me: “Did you see their little faces?”
Cousin: “Wait, does anyone actually believe in the Easter Bunny?”
Me: “Well, they don’t now!”
This will be the final entry of the saga of the crazy grandmother from the Stab Caesar series. This is because my parents finally got her on Medicaid, and she is now in a home full-time. But it was not without drama.
In October, her doctors approved her for a pacemaker set to be put in at the end of December. However, in early November, she came downstairs one Thursday, claiming she didn’t have a pulse. My dad barely managed to find it, and the decision was made to take her to the ER. The doctors at our local hospital determined her pacemaker surgery had to be moved up. This meant they needed to transfer her to a different (and much better) hospital in the next county.
Now, non-emergency transport is, in a word, slow. They took so long to get to her that my dad ended up leaving before the ambulance arrived. The slow service was completely unacceptable to her, and no one could give her an exact time of when her transport would arrive. It was nine or ten o’clock at night when it finally arrived, based on when she stopped calling the house to complain about the wait, the nurses, and whatever else she fancied.
Friday, the next day, she had the surgery. My dad, uncle, and cousin went to visit her around lunchtime. She was not happy. “The doctors are horrible! The nurses are horrible! I’ve never been treated so horribly in my life!” This is arguably the best hospital in the entire state, and you don’t hear many stories about patient neglect here, so my uncle did some digging.
The problem: the doctors and nurses insisted on doing their jobs, which involved seeing their other patients. My grandmother seriously expected them to wait around on her hand and foot like they were servants. My uncle went to the nurses’ station to warn them that she was in a mood, but she had already been labeled as “difficult” in their system. She had been in this hospital for a little over twelve hours at this point.
The next day, my dad went to get her, since we had been told since October that the pacemaker surgery was supposed to be an outpatient procedure. But two different doctors agreed that since she is ninety-five, she needed to go straight to a rehab place for a few days so she can be under observation and someone can answer any questions she has about the pacemaker. She was pissed when she found out she wasn’t going home, but the staff eventually convinced her that this was for the best.
The staff at the hospital told my dad they would arrange the transportation, but since it was a weekend, she may not get transferred that day. Dad stayed with her most of the day, but he did eventually have to leave since Mom didn’t want him driving an hour and a half in the dark. (He had a mini-stroke last summer, and he’s mostly fine, but every once in a while, he does something weird, like taking three lefts to turn right.) Crazy called the house several times to complain about the lack of transportation. My dad tried to reason with her. “It’s Saturday night, they’re probably busy and have minimal staff.” This wasn’t good enough.
Sometime on Sunday, she was transferred to the rehab/nursing home. My dad visited her on Monday. She was not happy. After a few days, some of the staff talked to my parents about getting her homed there permanently. Now, my parents had tried to get her on Medicaid a few times before, but she was always denied since she made too much money from Social Security. She drew off my grandfather’s Social Security, even though 1) they divorced when Dad was in high school, 2) he’s been dead for almost twenty-six years now, and 3) she’s been married and divorced a couple of times since she divorced my grandfather.
We can’t figure out how she was allowed to do this.) The staff at the rehab were great and helped walk my parents through the process in a way that would significantly raise her chances of getting accepted, and in the meantime, Medicare would pay for, I think, a hundred days of care for her.
Grandma went back and forth on her view of the place during this hundred-day trial period. She liked the social aspect of it and often played bingo with the other residents. (We had tried to sign her up for elderly social things before and rejected it.) But, she wasn’t allowed to have any outside medicine, and the staff still weren’t treating her like the queen she thinks she is.
We did try to clean her room while she was gone since it was a complete disaster area. The amount of medicine we found in her room was astonishing. Twenty bottles of unopened OmegaXL. Twelve unopened bottles and three opened bottles of Balance of Nature vitamins. Two opened things of Colace. One unopened bottle of calcium chews. Four bottles of Shaklee vitamins. And a whole medium-sized box full of various prescription medications. Some of the medicines and supplements my parents bought for her with her money, but the rest she conned my cousin into getting for her.
Then there was the food.
There was a peanut butter jar that wasn’t closed, three big cans of coffee, too many protein shakes to count, a moldy orange juice bottle, a large jug of powdered Balance of Nature, three boxes of her special tea bags (she refused to drink tea that wasn’t a certain brand), and two cans of long-expired chicken were in her closet. There were also countless pills scattered on her floor, and we are lucky the cats never tried to eat them. The power strip had stains from where she spilled coffee, juice, and who knows what else on it over the years. We’re lucky she didn’t burn our house down. And the smell of urine, baby powder, and Chanel No. 5 was baked into that room. Leaving the window open for a full day did nothing to get rid of that smell. Our best guess is that she lost her sense of smell long before she moved in with us.
We greatly enjoyed our holidays without her. The stress levels in the house plummeted. My parents started to fantasize about going away for long weekends without having to arrange care for her. Finally, at the end of January, we got the acceptance letter in the mail! She is approved and will now stay in the home!
Related:
We Should Totally Just Stab Caesar! (Salad), Part 2
We Should Totally Just Stab Caesar! (Salad)
