Taking care of my grandad has been a fun mix of enjoyable, exhausting and fulfilling. When I was a lot younger my younger brother and I used to spend long holidays at his house in our home town and the old man spared no expense to make sure that we were comfortable and cared for, it feels good to be able to sort of repay his love and kindness by caring for him now…unfortunately they are a few glitches on the way.
The first problem is that my grandfather is the most stubborn human being I have ever met in my entire life, the man has been through a lot, from surviving a stroke to catching Covid and then finally having a heart attack, but he feels like if he shows any signs of weakness he is less of a man.
Unfortunately his body doesn’t get the memo that the old man would rather struggle than ask for help and constantly shows signs that he is in need of assistance further embarrassing the man and making him feel bad.
A typical example is the fact that since his stroke he cannot get up from the bed unassisted when he wakes up in the morning, i did not know this when he was brought to live with us and he would always insist that he wanted to lie down a little longer whenever I walked into his room in the morning. It wasn’t until a couple of days into his visit that I caught him painfully making his best effort to get out of bed on his own. When I got him out of bed and bathed and brushed his teeth I found him crying silently a while later, he said “I can’t even stand up on my own anymore, a whole soldier” (he fought in the Biafra war), it took a lot of convincing him that it was just part of aging and he was doing great for someone who had been through all that he had to get him to begin to accept assistance.
Another problem is that the realization that he is almost totally dependent on other people forces him to stubborn about to littlest things he can control. I was asked to try to get him to take a walk today, when I suggested it to him he bluntly refused stating that he was not in the mood even though he hadn’t agreed to leave the house for a few days. After several attempts I left him alone for a few hours and offered to take him to buy palm wine which he enjoys a lot. He asked that I get it for him but I convinced him that our customer had changed her source and we needed him to taste it to be sure he liked the new source, that is how I managed to get him out of the house for a bit of exercise.
Unfortunately our customer didn’t have palm wine and he is still complaining about that till this very moment.
Caring for the elderly takes a lot of patience but I’ve found it easier to just remind myself that I too will grow old one day and I might need to rely on other people, so I treat him with the care and consideration I hope to receive in the future.
Please note that I have permission to share these photos.
