The Degeneration

It is at once scary and also saddening to note that as human beings age, their bodily systems slow to a perceptible crawl, their reflexes slowly but surely grind to a lower new constant and their mental faculties start to falter. Out of the three however, the slowing of the mind and its associated capabilities brings about the most difficulty and anguish, to the person experiencing it as well as to the people unfortunate enough to be around him/her when the brain cells start to die for good.

My grandmother is undergoing that stage right now, having lived vicariously through the deity of gambling for the past eight decades, and then some. Still, she is going strong, and according to one over-enthusiastic and retrospectively irresponsible doctor, healthier than a person ten years younger. If you ask me, she's a bit too strong, to the point that she is exhibiting signs of emotional displacement and displaying severe violent tendencies to her immediate family members.

Three times within a week, she wound up in three different police stations, after running away from home (yes at her goddamned age) due to trivial and wholly unnecessary squabbles with my family members - primarily my Dad - over the maid who had been employed for the sole reason to care for her. What is wrong with just sitting there on the sofa, watching TV and having someone to take care of your every need? Sounds like an awesome time, but then again I'm not grandma.

Everyday she tries to find fault with the maid, picks fights with her which almost always degenerates to forceful stoppage and loud shouting from both sides of the conflict. The innocent citizen - the maid - bears the brunt of the damage, and is powerless to do anything about it, although she knows that everyone in the family except grandma is protecting her. Yet, we cannot be in the house all day, all the time, and truth be told, I am beginning to DREAD coming back to the house, for fear of history, especially last Friday's event, repeating itself.

There I was, in the cinema at Iluma watching Transformers 3 for the second time with my OCU classmates when a flurry of messages from my sister came in, saying that grandma went crazy again and Dad is on his way to the hospital because of a deep cut caused by a fall with grandma when the two of them were struggling. Again, it was because of the maid, or rather, grandma tried to attack the maid when she was just minding her own business, and Dad (and his confrontational character) tried to stop her and shake some sense into grandma. I believe one or the other lost balance and both of them fell to the floor, and Dad cut his forehead on one of the sofa's sharp corners. According to eyewitnesses, a lot of blood was seen on the ground after the incident, and Mom had to accompany Dad to the TTSH A&E for treatment. The messages came halfway through the movie, and had it been my first time watching the show, I would be even more pissed than I was last Friday, like Megatron-pissed.

Having lost focus on the movie, I spent the last 1.5 hours merely admiring the finer details of the SFX, noted the details on The Wreckers' vehicle modes and scrutinized Shockwave's cannon and Optimus Prime's solo rampage through a gauntlet of Decepticons. Straight after the movie, I had to bid the group adieu to rush to the hospital, where my parents were waiting for their turn in the Emergency, and it was only after two hours that we were finally on the way home, with Dad having four new stitches in his forehead.

One of these days, someone is gonna get hurt real bad, and the worst part is, grandma will conveniently forget everything the next day due to her rapidly deteriorating memory.

All these when I'm just about to start class again next week.

Excellent.

Feed the fish kids.