Vivamus sed
Tr. Aliquam
Publisher: Querido
Design: Quisque
Tr. Aliquam
Publisher: Querido
Design: Quisque
This is my grandmother, Betty Macdonald. But she's always been Boppy to me. She loves telling the story of how I came up with that name; she had gone down to the basement and Grandad was calling her from upstairs asking her to grab something while she was down there saying "Betty! Betty!" and I looked at him and tried to copy him, but instead of Betty it just came out as Boppy and ever since that's been her name. In my childhood I spent almost every weekend with her and Grandad having sleepovers at their house. For a moment my mom and I lived with them as being a single mom was hard and they were always there for us. Both Boppy and Grandad have been a comforting constant for my whole life, built in, decades older, best friends. She talks about grandad all the time, and usually cries about him once a day. There’s many things that have changed since he died, not only physically like how she now lives at my parents house and a line of oxygen runs through the hallways, or how mom is constantly worried and caring for her, but also how it’s becoming more and more difficult for me to remember her as she was for the majority of my life, before Dementia. I wish I had filed as many conscious memories of her as I could in my mind, just to look back on, because now I’m grasping at dwindling time trying to still do so in fear of regret. It’s ironic, though, how we’re both forgetting. One of us is forgetting because of atrophying of brain nerves and the other is experiencing an erosion of memory due to the uncontrollable continuation of clearer, recent memories.
Grandad died in December of 2024, boppy is currently dying. Sometimes she gets sad about it and says she's worried for me, but more often she says how ready and how eager she is to see her husband.