Trading places

"I used to sit by your bedside comforting you when you had your asthma attacks," grandmama recalled. "Now you are sitting by my bedside comforting me."

Grandmama was missing at our Chinese New Year reunion dinner and things are not the same. This was the first reunion dinner ever that she was not present at the table. She was immobile, lying on her bed.

I'm not sure, but I'm willing to guess that each of us has imprinted in our minds a picture of how our parents and/or grandparents looked physically as we grew up and grew older alongside them. I found myself wondering what they had been like before I was born.

What had been their dreams? I felt strange trying to relate those faces, those bodies, those expressions to the elderly parents, grandma I now know. In the time before me, who were they?

We do the elderly as terrible disservice when we forget who they were when they were strong. And of course, I look at my hair and my face and I see changes that frighten me. Not because I'm afraid of growing older, but because I'm afraid of growing irrelevant.

Bernie and gramps