Hello friends. I have been away from the blog longer than I planned or wanted to be. That is mostly due to the fact that Ila Jean has been in decline. She needs more care now than ever. She cannot stand on her own, that is, unless it is the middle of the night when I’m asleep or the ten minutes I leave the house to run an errand. She then finds the strength somewhere from within to get up long enough to wreak havoc or fall out in the floor. She rarely says anything that makes any sense to anyone anymore. Before I felt I was taking care of someone I knew and cared for, even if I often didn’t like her. Now I feel like I am taking care of a stranger most of the time. I certainly have been a stranger to her in the last few days.
The night before she took this turn for good however, she had a window of clarity, and we had quite an eventful exchange. She had been a royal bitch, yes I said it and it’s true, and her vitriol had turned from general to very specific and very personal. Without going into details, she yelled at me, I yelled at her, some awful things were said by both parties. Then we both broke into sobbing for the next half hour. Then something happened. We began to talk.
The next day, my mother would tell me how much granny had went on and on about our wonderful conversation. Even in her limited mental state, it had had stuck with her.
Ila Jean said that she didn’t know me at all. Several weeks earlier, near the beginning of my care for her, she had said, “I like you.”
“I like you too,” I replied.
“No, I mean I really like you. In the last couple of weeks, I feel like I’ve gotten to know you. Before, you were just someone who was related to me. But now I like you.”
“Um…thanks?” This was news to me. It’s not as if we had been strangers who only saw each other every few years.
So this recent evening, she was mourning the fact that we didn’t know each other. “Well, what would you like to know?” I asked.
“I don’t know, anything.”
I searched my brain for anything that would be of substance, but appropriate for grandmother ears. There is a lot that is not appropriate for grandmother ears.
“Well…” I stalled, “I was in a movie that recently premiered at the Chicago International Film Festival,” and I waited to see if she would take the bait or dismiss it as some silly hobby.
She perked up slightly. “Well that’s something. I guess. Isn’t it?” She really didn’t know.
“Yeah, I think so. I mean, it was just a small part. Not a big deal.” I was already undercutting myself as I always do. Then I decided to test the waters. What the hell. Nothing left to lose. “Are you ready to be shocked?” She nodded. “I played a sex addict.”
And for the first time in my life, I heard that woman laugh out loud. Head thrown back, full gusto. I think it would be fair to say that she shocked me more than I shocked her. I guess she had the last laugh.
And it makes me mad.
Because as soon as we had found each other, began to get to know each other, as soon as I had started to see this other human being sitting across from me and the life within her, she disappeared again.
The Life and Death of Ila Jean Brown 