The family dinner

As much as I don't like to say it, I don't think grandma's going to be around for much longer. She hates being in the hospital, but being out of it is stressful, uncomfortable and never the way she expects it to be.

Sitting in a loaner wheelchair, her muscles have atrophied so much that she couldn't stay upright, and was trying to eat leaning fourty-five degrees to her right, and eventually stopped eating because her feet were sitting at such weird angles in her shoes on the footrests and it was causing her a lot of pain. She shook a lot.

We'd made the tactical error of seating her between the two cousins, whom she doesn't like because they are always noisy and poorly behaved. They're not bad kids, just really undisciplined, and they were at all times in all places all over the restaurant and underneath the table. My sister and I never acted like that, and would have been beaten if we had, but these kids just get idle threats. I guess I have no right to comment on other peoples' parenting.

But because she was sitting over there and not with us, she was completely left out of the conversation, not that it would have necessarily helped if she had been more included. I really don't know. It's just not a good idea to take her out of the hospital anymore. She's just too out of her element.