when we grow old.

so my grandma came to my house last 2 sundays and stayed over till last night.
it made me think about a lot of things.
.
i can't say that i'm completely fond of her stay here,
i AM glad to see her again after a very long time,
but i guess i'm just not used to having a grandparent so near to myself for so long,
that i have problems adapting to the fact that she is here in my house.
.
it frustrates me to see how weak she is now,
how she can't walk for long without her walking-aid-bar-thingy.
how she has nothing much to talk about because she usually stays home while her children went off to work.
how pills and medications follows after every meal.
how she has become a mere shadow of her past.
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what frustrates me even more is that there is nothing i can do to fix her condition.
with every passing year her condition gets worse,
and i hate that.
.
unaccustomed to TLC*,
i can't find anything in my head to provide her with comfort and filial piety as any grandchild should have for her/his grandparents.
.
i have nothing.
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i don't know what to talk to her about,
nor anything to entertain her with.
all i seem to know to do is do whatever she needs me to do, and inform her about lunch and dinner when they're ready.
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i felt like such a failure.
because i know that the day will come when i won't be able to see her anymore,
the day will come when i'll miss her presence in my life,
the day will come when i'll regret for not doing more for her.
the day will come when i feel more helpless than what i'm feeling now.
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one day my parents will be grandparents,
so will i, one day in the future.
and soon everything that exists to me today will become nothing more than a memory,
fame and glory will become nothing but the past,
friends will be reduced to merely passport-sized mugshots embedded onto marble plates.
one day i will be in my grandma's shoes.
.
she cried when she told us that she's going back to my uncle's house.
i held my tears back and kept telling myself,
"Do not cry, you know she'll cry even more when you respond to her tears."
.
though she's coming back in April,
i can't get over the thought of yesterday,
while i lie on the sofa, pretending to concentrate on the tv,
and she teared up on the futon behind me whenever she thinks about her leaving this house.
.
she left after dinner last night.
as my head touches my pillows that night,
streams of saline solution forms from my eyes like rivers that never dries up
and i cried myself to sleep.
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*TLC= tender loving care