Visited Gramma in the nursing home today. Not the one that died a few weeks ago, the other one. She had busted her leg taking a fall and now she’s in the nursing unit. Maybe she’ll get out, maybe not.
Anyhow.
She has three roomates. Two of them are Rutabagas as far as I or Gramma can tell, the other one is diabetic and missing all her fingers and her feet. she seemed nice.
I took Gramma for a wheel and she tried to teach me Bridge for a while, but she’s been trying to teach me Bridge for 20 years without success so this was nothing serious, just our standard routine.
Then Gramma confides in me the Big Secret. Her roommate tried to kill herself.
“What?” I say.
“She’s sick of it here, so she tries to kill herself,” says Gramma.
I think about how this frail women with no hands and feet would go about killing herself, and I come up empty. Gramma stairs at me as if I’m failing an intelligence test.
I picture the woman trying to bludgeon herself to death with her stumpy hands, but I just don’t see it.
“Did she dive out of bed and try to smash her head on the floor?” I ask hopefully.
Gramma looks at me with disdain.
I continue thinking. Gramma’s opinion is that I’m an idiot. My whole life she’s been giving little tests like this as an opportunity to prove that I’m not. One of these days she’s going to die, and I’d like to pass one of her tests before then, so she can at least meet her maker knowing that her descendents aren’t complete dullards.
“Ok, I got it. She crawled out of bed, wormed her way across the floor and down the hall and into the bathroom where she stuck her head in the toilet.”
“No,” says Gramma. “She can barely move. She can’t do that.”
“She tried to stab herself with something?”
Gramma gives me the rolleyes. :rolleyes:
God, I hate that!
“Ok. She swallowed her toungue?”
“Can you swallow your toungue? Do you know anybody who can swallow their tongue? How do you swallow your toungue?”
“It can happen,” I say defensively
:rolleyes:
“Stop that!”
" I’ll give you a hint. Do you need a hint."
“Ok.”
“It almost worked. In fact she stopped breathing.”
“Ok. I got it. She saved up her sleeping pills and took them all at once, but the Doctor’s saved her, right.”
“No. The Doctors didn’t even notice.”
“They didn’t.”
“Nobody noticed but me. They’re not very smart.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I guess they must be pretty stupid if people are walking around trying to kill themselves and they don’t even notice”
“She can’t walk,” Gramma reminds me.
“I was just being sarcastic.”
“Oh.”
“Ok Gramma” I say. “If nobody even noticed, how are you so sure she was trying to kill herself, huh?”
“I asked her, and she said she was.”
“Oh.”
We’re silent for a few minutes, and I look at my cards. I guess there’s a poker hand in here somewhere. Don’t you need four people to play bridge?
It’s my turn. I’m supposed to say something like “Trump 23 west on two, hike!” or something.
“Why don’t you play any regular games like poker, war, or go fish? Why do we have to play bridge?”
“Here!” Gramma says taking my cards. She shows me something incomprehensible, calls out a box score, and hands my cards back.
“I give up,” I admit. “How was she trying to kill herself.”
“The only way she could. She was holding her breath until she passed out.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
Thanks for posting that.
That is so sad.