Every Sunday it's the same old routine:  get up early, eat breakfast, and get dressed; then we leave the house before eight thirty, so we can be at the Rising Acres Nursing Home, so we can see grandma.

We spend a good part of our day here.  It is really a depressing place:  all these old people, many of them sitting in wheelchairs or shuffling along in their ratty bedclothes, mumbling to themselves or not even acknowledging your presence as you go by.  It smells:  vomit, oatmeal or mush, urine, old age; the smells make my stomach pitch and roll; it is all I can do to keep from throwing up myself.

Grandma is here because of advanced Alzheimer's disease.  She no longer knows where she is, who she is, or who we are, even though we are her very own family.  She spends her days sitting in her wheelchair, staring vacantly out the window, her purse in her lap, and her ratty coat draped over her skinny shoulders, her white hair all frizzy and out of control.  She cannot take care of herself: she has to be fed, bathed, even diapered like a baby; it is degrading to us to see her have to be in this state; we remember her only a few years before, when she would embrace us and laugh at our jokes.

Now grandma is a shell of her former self.  When she took bad, we had no choice but to put her in this place; it was one of the hardest decisions that my parents ever had to make.

Sometimes while my mom and dad try to tell grandma who we are and why she is here, I wander the halls, in the hopes of finding a person my age (sixteen), or to clear my head.  I've seen enough suffering to last me the rest of my days; these people don't deserve to be treated so badly!  More than once, I've seen overworked nurses yelling at my grandmother or tying her to the bed with leather straps because she decided to go on her walk again, or shooting her up with drugs that make her go mental on us.

It's terrifying to see, yet I feel powerless, because I can't do anything to stop it.  It's sheer madness!

Poor grandma doesn't understand; how often do I have to keep repeating myself to these ungrateful medical workers??  I sometimes feel like I'm speaking Chinese or Arabic; these damn people don't even seem to care anymore!

When I am on one of my "gadabouts" in the hallways of Rising Acres, I watch some old men playing checkers.  One of them always tries to get me to join in.  I usually relent, but one day, I feel compelled to go over and watch the men play.  The one who called me over is named George:  a rather stout fellow with very thin hair on top of his round head, a beakish nose, a small mouth, intense grey eyes that seem to burn right through me.  He seems friendly enough, I think, as I watch the trio try to outwit one another.

George is here because he has diabetes that caused him to lose both legs.  He sits in a worn out wheelchair, a checked robe thrown over his rotund frame.  Underneath the robe, the man wears yellowed pajama pants and shirt; he smells like blueberries; he must have just had a bath before he wheeled himself down here to the rec room, I remember thinking.

George introduces himself to me, then asks me my name.  I tell him.  Tim.  He then proceeds to introduce me to his friends, telling him that I remind him of his grandson.  I blush at the compliment.  George tells me he's seen me come here for a while; I tell him about my grandmother, who has Alzheimer's.  George's eyes fill with tears; he tells me he lost his own wife, Pricie, to the same disease three years ago, and this was when his own health took bad.  This was how he ended up here once he'd recovered from the amputation of his legs.

I sit down between George and his friends and watch for a while.  I then start to play checkers; it is soon obvious that I don't have a chance with these seasoned veterans; they clean my clock but good!  I guess time escapes from me because while I sit here and play, laughing all the while, my mom and dad come up to me, startling me.  They tell me it is time to go.  I then usually leave, usually in the early afternoon.

Ever since I started coming here, and spending time with George, I feel like I've gained another grandpa.  He seems to be very sweet, just as my own grandpa was before he sickened and died.  My eyes tear at the memory because back then, grandma's Alzheimer's wasn't too bad.  She'd forget something now and then, but she could, more or less, still take care of herself and function.  It was only after grandpa died when her Alzheimer's got worse; now she is unable to do anything for herself and must rely on others to take care of her instead.

Anyways, George is a good ol' boy.  He was born in Kentucky and had three sons; two of them were handicapped and ended up going into a home for retarded children.  The third son lived with him until he ran away to join the Marines; he was then killed during Vietnam; the boy's death still haunts him all these years later.  He got diabetes after the death of his Marine son, and it slowly, but steadily, got worse, until he ended up losing his legs to the disease -- and ending up in a nursing home.

I do hope that George and I can become good friends.  I don't really care for coming to Rising Acres, but maybe becoming friends with one of the residents will make my own worries about grandma easier to bear  -- at least a little bit.

I can only hope.