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I could never understand how family members wouldn’t go visit their loved ones in long term nursing care facilities. I thought to myself, “How selfish of them” to not be able to dedicate an hour a day, or a few hours on the weekend. I mean, how could someone say they loved and truly cared for their family member and just forget they were even there and needed help? Well, I understand it now. At least a little bit. And I truly apologize for the judgment. How dare I think that seeing deteriorating family members would be easy?

When my grandmother stopped living with me, I fell into a deep depression. And when I say “deep”, I mean DEEEEEEEP. My depression was a mix of all of these just truly intense emotions. I was experiencing an overwhelming sense of anger and hate, shame and helplessness, and sadness. At any given moment, all of these emotions were geared toward myself, my husband, or the world. Seriously…the world, because the system of caring for our seniors is disgusting and cruel. With all of those emotions being felt in every pore of my body, it felt as though there was a layer of flames hovering in an outline my skin. I was fuming every day, all day. I was just emotionally raw and with that rawness, the thought of seeing my grandmother became more and more difficult for me to take. She was confused and sad and upset. She immediately went into survival mode, ignoring us and just laughing with the CNAs to make sure they liked her and were pleasant with her. She was angered by the sight of us. Tata would quickly try to usher us out one day or just cry the next day. All I could do was imagine how I would feel in that situation – loss of language, utterly confused, in a different environment, loss of mental capacity, no control on when I eat, what I eat, where I can go, no independence, and alone. For 24 hours a day. Every day. Those thoughts would race in my head over and over again until the anxiety became unbearable. I would break down in tears on the bus and turn around. The anxiety would build up so much that I had to completely shut my mind down in order to avoid completely losing it altogether. I would hide under the covers and block everyone and everything out. I would even just zone out watching Grey’s Anatomy on Netflix. Now, don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t actually watching the show. I just needed the constant noise and visual to put me in a trance. And at work, if anyone dared to ask me how I felt, I would get angry because I knew they really didn’t want to know. And I knew they couldn’t really understand. And I knew, that more than anything, in order for me to function and do the bare minimum of my job, I needed to go on autopilot without acknowledging any feelings whatsoever.

It took almost an entire year before I could go visit Tata again. I still had a great deal of shame. Who am I kidding? I still do have a great deal of shame. Not dedicating my life to her as I did when she lived with me? It is shameful to me. So how was I able to finally walk through the doors of the facility? I forgave myself and only because a song came on Grey’s that actually penetrated my trance. I found out that the song was All of Your Glory by Broods. I immediately found the song on Spotify and started breaking down. Now, I have no idea of the original meaning of this song, but I could imagine the lyrics to this song so clearly being a conversation between me and Tata.