My grandma doesn’t travel anymore at her impressive age of 96, so it had been a while since we saw her. We planned to meet up with her for lunch in her retirement community’s dining hall. We showed up right when we had planned to, and my mom barged into Grandma’s room. She was well-dressed and asleep in her chair. We made ourselves comfortable. I sat down on the couch near her and said “Hi, Grandma!” She startled a bit and said, “Well that’s how you rob a place! I was just napping the other day with the door unlocked, and the cleaner just came in and did her business while I slept right through it.”

She is slowing down physically, but she is still quite sharp for her age. Sometimes, she has trouble remembering words, and she frequently mixes up names of her relatives. She sometimes calls me by her son’s name and Emily by her daughter in law’s name. Also, she mixes up her two daughters’ names. Usually she will just spurt out the wrong name and correct it right away. My dad was doing stuff like that since before he turned 60 though, to put things in perspective.

Em convinced me to bring my trumpet back to Providence with us. It has been in a closet in my mom’s house for the past nine years or so, and I have played it approximately three times since then. Since we had the trumpet with us, my mom suggested I play a bit for Grandma. I played Amazing Grace for her – she has been requesting that I play that at her funeral for the past ten years or so.

The retirement community my grandma lives in is incredibly swanky. I tell people it is like Club Med. Grandma is always excited to show us around when we come. They have a putting green, a swimming pool, ping pong tables (we saw a game in action), a gym, two libraries, and even a computer room with Macs. I have never seen anyone using the computer room, but Grandma says that some people use it, and many residents are much younger than her. To me, it seems like having an abacus room in a college dorm.