Dementia through Evi

There are many things in life that stigmatize you as you mature. You start to perceive them and deal with them differently. Something similar happened in the case of Manolios..

Manolios was a child who grew up very close to his grandparents and had them as a model for how he should think and act. Especially, his grandmother.

His grandmother existed in her life in 2 versions. And you will tell me now, did he have a bipolar personality? I'll roughly answer you and let you figure out the rest by telling the story.

Grandma Evi, therefore, was a girl who came as an immigrant from Turkey to Greece, due to the Asia Minor disaster, together with her parents and her 3 brothers. From a young age it seemed that she had a star in her to succeed! She was the only one in the family who managed to go to school and graduate.

After coming of age, she focused more in her career. She managed to be independent, make her own money, support her family and raise her siblings' children.

Over the years, she felt that she should put her professional plans on hold and focus on her personal life. Because of the times, her family wanted to marry a man from a well-to-do family. However, Evi had a different opinion, since she was in love with a man from her neighborhood, who was quite shy. Imagine that it took him 5 whole years to express his interest! 

After a lot of persistence from Evi, they made up, got married and after 2 abortions (reasonable for a 35-year-old woman at the time) they gave birth to their 2 children, Lenio (Manolius' mother) and Nontis. Evi completely stopped her professional career to concentrate on raising her children.

Years passed, but not everything was rosy. There were major accidents, which led to serious health issues for both of their 2 children. Through much love and running they were overcomed and Evi returned to a working environment when her children were old enough. Through her persistence again, she became the manager of a textile shop! Under these circumstances, grandfather Michalis and grandmother Evi retired and enjoyed their lives as grandparents now.

Everything was going well, until grandmother Evi's dementia appeared. After this event, the balance of the family began to be lost.  A typical example was one day when she took her stroller and went shopping, not sure of the destination. At one point, while she was at the supermarket and couldn't remember what she had to buy, she magically sees her grandson. You see, he hadn't realized that her husband had called him to look for her!

On the way back, she got that damn dementia again...

He asked Manolios if he had taken all the ingredients:

-Manoliodid we get eggs? Did we get flour?

- Yes, grandma, we got it all!

As you can understand, she really wanted to make him cookies because she knew he loved them! Since he reassured her that everything was fine, she remembered or basically couldn't forget her cane. So Manolios ran to the supermarket and brought it to her. They finally arrived at home.

There he heard many complaints, all of which had as their main question: "why did you get up and leave without informing anyone?". On the one hand, she was saddened that she had aroused them, on the other hand, she was sad that they could not understand her... 

As the time pass, Grandma Evi got worse and her people could not realize that such a dynamic woman need them so much now.

One of her last nights at home, she was seized with terrible hallucinations. She saw her grandfather chasing her to kill her. The family decided to take her to a clinic so they could help her. Unfortunately, things went their way from there. Her health condition was deteriorating day by day. One of the last visits to the clinic, the grandmother advised her grandson to try to be healthy and comfortable and everything else with the daily struggle will come. 

Grandma finally came through and things were never the same again…