“Your mother,” he said slowly, “told me you didn’t want to hear from me.”
“She told me you didn’t remember me. She said my letters confused you.”
We sat there and stared at each other.
Grandpa picked up his pen and looked at the crossword. His hand was shaking. Then he put the pen down and looked back at me, and his eyes were the old eyes. The ones that could quiet a room.
“Emma,” he said. “I don’t have dementia.”
He didn’t. Not then and not ever.
He’d had a stroke. It had made him weak on one side, slurred his speech for a while. For a few months, he’d been confused. But he’d worked hard in rehab and gotten almost all of himself back. By the time Mom and Dad went to court for the conservatorship, he was doing crossword puzzles in pen.
