He also makes really terrible jokes. But I think they are funny.

I couldn’t get my banjo out of the bathroom stall. I don’t know if this has ever happened to you, but, if it hasn’t, it is rather stressful. If you too have experienced this, we are soul mates; please call me.

Back to the moment, the banjo was stuck and I with it. If you were there, you would have been able to save me (Hint: Turn banjo on side). But, there I was without you, soulmate, in the Albany Airport at 4:00 am madly trying to free my wedged banjo as the intercom tells me that my flight is boarding.

I sat down on the toliet and cried.

After stopping, I asked myself why I was crying, because I am trying to be better in touch with my emotions instead of bottling them up where hopefuly You-Know-Who will never find them.

Then, I realized, Holy Dickens! My plane is boarding! And resumed madly tugging at my banjo.

Then, I got it free.

FREEEEEEEEEEEDDDDDOOOOOOMMMM!!!

William Wallace and I share emotions. Yeah, I am that deep.

I am in the process of returning from Thanksgiving break during which I stayed with my Grams, a.k.a. Grandma Hershkowitz. Yes, she is Jewish. Whoa. That means, I, your ever-witty (cough) author, am in fact a Jew by race. If you stop reading my blog now or ever, you are an Anti-Semite. Just saying.

Grams is 94 years old. 94. Can you imagine 94? I can’t. She was born roughy 6 years after the Titanic sank. She doesn’t know what the Internet is. I tried to expain texting. It went over like a lead balloon filled with lead. Oh, did I mention that her memory is going so you have to repeat things? I tried to vary my variable methodology.

That said, I might have just seen my grandma for the last time.

Damn.

She really is not doing well cognitively and well, she’s 94.

So, visiting Grams involves dealing with the idea of death and history and is an intense emotional roller coaster in and of itself. But, that’s not all, dear blog fans. You know me, if there is anyway to make life more intense, I’ll do it. So, I don’t like talking about personal stuff, but there is this amazing boy and he is dating me and I really like him and he lives in my Grams’s hometown. Before this trip I had seen him for 4 days in the past 6 months.

Are you ready, emotions? ARE YOU READY TO BRING IT?!

Grams is depressed and highly highly anxious. She does not like to ask for help and will try to forcibly stop you from helping her, which is just pathetic. But, she will have freak outs where she will fixate on something and get highly worked up, agitated, cry, and sometimes get so disoriented that she is a danger to herself.

“Becky, oh God, BECKY!”

I was happy she got my name right.

“We have no food. We have no food for you guys.”

“Who, Grams?”

“For you and Daniel and Mark and Joanna and—“

“Gramma, no one else is here. It’s just me.”

“What?”

It took a while to clarify things. The saddest thing about my Grams is that she knows that she doesn’t know. She can see just enough to see that she is forgetting. And she really hates it.

“Oh god, Becky, I am not doing well.” She grabbed my shoulders and leaned into my shoulder crying.

“I am so sorry. Becky, I am so sorry. I am such a bother.”

“Grams, stop it. You are a blessing.”

“I should be serving you…I got to get the food ready. We don’t have enough food ready. Here I’ll just walk to Stewarts.”

“No, Grams.”

She started crying. I sat there helpless. How do you reason with someone who has lost her ability to reason? How do you console your grandma knowing she’ll forget?

Banjo.

“Grams. Let’s go to the living room and I’ll play my banjo for you!” She had been asking. I really think I am terrible and try to avoid playing solo at all costs.

“Oh, but dinner…”

“Please. Grams, please! Would you do this for me?”

“I’d do anything for you, sweetheart.”

We go to the living room.

My Grams is very interested in my boy. During the trip, she asked me a lot of questions. She is quite sad he isn’t Jewish. I asked her about her boy, my fourteen-years-deceased Grandpa Sam. How did they meet? What was he like? Did you know he was the one? The stories were…intense. On their first date, he brought her home afterwards to meet his family. It was late, and my grandfather’s father said Sam couldn’t drive her home because it was too far (it was maybe 25 min…old people…). So, she had to stay there. My grandfather slept in his bed and left Grams on the floor.

I help her to the couch in the living room whilst dragging my banjo in from the other room.

“My feet are cold.” I am up already and am two feet from the closet.

“I’ll get you a blanket.”

“You’ll do no such thing! You’re a guest.” I start towards the closet. A competition of speed ensues between the 94 year old and the 23 year old. Against all odds, I won.

“I feel so bad that you come all this way and then you take care of me. I should be taking care of you.”

Who took care of you, Grams? I want to ask. But I know the answer. When Sam proposed to my Grams, she started crying and squeaking, “No, no, no!” in what I assume was increduality. He mockingly mimiced her in falsetto. Who took care of you, Grams?

At this point, I sitting across from my panicking Grams, exhausted with a banjo on my knee.

I can’t think. I am struggling to breath. The weight is too overwhelming. There is a long and involved story of my Grams, Mom, and me. I know some of the problems my mother had to deal with as a child being raised by Grams. All three of us have so much dsyfunction and so much sadness. That is should come to this.

I just start playing. After a few bars, I realize I am playing “Hail to the Lord’s Annointed.” And so I start singing.

Hail to the Lord’s Annointed, Great David’s Greater Son
Hail in the time appointed his reign earth begun
He comes to break oppression, to set the captives free
To take away trangression and rule in equity.

And I sing and I sing and I sing. I call for Christ’s return. I beg for his saving grace. I praise him for his glory. I tell of Christ’s love, of my own doubt. I sing to my grandmother about a savior she does not know. One that I believe is the only way to eternal life. One that she now cannot understand. I sing because I want to calm her. I want her to be healed. I sing because I don’t know what else I can do.

She fell asleep. I woke her up, helped get her into bed, and then I texted my boy to hang out.

If there is anything more different than dealing with a dying grandparents, it’s hanging out with your new (ish) boyfriend. It is a beginning. Sure, it might come to a surripitous end. But it is a beginning.

And it is hopeful.

You don’t date someone hoping that it ends. You are hopeful with every relationship that this might be the one. Are you the one? Are you going to travel this weird thing called life with me? Did you too get an instrument stuck in the bathroom stall at the Albany airport? Are you going to love me even though I am crazy? I hope so.

I feel hopeless about my Grams. She can’t understand; she doesn’t know who I am a lot of the time. The only hope I could muster was in the words of those hymns that point to Christ and his kingdom.

Then, I am with this boy, this kind beauty, sitting in a dive diner laughing and talking. And, there is so much hope. But at the same time, I am utterly hopeless. You know the movie Toy Story? You know what the bad kid Sid did to all his toys? Yeah, I feel like my sin and my past have made me like one of those toys emotionally.

No one can ever love me. Look at what you did. Look at how you deal with your past. Look. You’re ugly. You’re broken. There is no hope.

He comes with succour speedy to those who suffer wrong
To help the poor and needy and bid the weak be strong
To give them songs for sighing, there darkness turned to light
Who souls condemned and dying were precious in his sight.

All this is hitting me, my emotional stability is maybe at a -2. And, there’s this boy. I was in rare form. And he held me as I quietly broke down.

I had to be at the airport at 3:30 am CST to make my 5:30am EST flight. His parents suggested that he sleep at my Grams's house to maximize sleep. My Grams consented. He gave me the bed and slept on the couch.