More on Ada

It’s not easy to get to know a ‘two-faced’, bipolar, 86 year old woman, who has dementia and is on serious medication.
But that’s my Great-Aunt Ada, and you don’t have to like someone to love them.

In any given day, she can throw a temper tantrum, go back in time to her childhood, laugh and make jokes, be manically depressed or sleep all day.

But something that remains constant is her penchant for drama!

In the mornings, Jean will ask Ada ‘How are you today?’
Ada might reply ‘Waiting to die!’

(It is very hard to keep a straight face here)

Jean will bring Ada her food, and say ‘Here my sweet! Eat your breakfast.’
Ada will turn to Jeanette and say ‘You will kill me!’
(Ada thinks the nurses are trying to poison her.)

Yet on other days, she says ‘Thank you my love. I am very lucky.’

Sometimes, her face will be looking really strange and oddly comical, and then you’ll notice she is holding her dentures in her hand.

I love the way she laughs when she realises she’s speaking Polish to us, and we don’t understand. So she says it again in English – only she’s actually still speaking Polish, but can’t tell the difference in her mind.

Most mornings, Ada wakes up and complains about her body aching (we don’t feel sorry for her, because she has been complaining all her life, and she refuses to exercise.) But the other morning, she was in a good mood, and I could hear her saying to Jean in her thick Polish accent “when ever I see that, I want to bite it…. Because it looks like chocolate!’
There was a long pause, and I wondered what she was looking at.
Then Jean said ‘The phone?’
‘Ya!’