Nenek (‘Grandmother’)

Written 11 April 2024.
Update: Nenek passed away on 18 August 2024.

I’ve always known her as old.

How old, no one knows.

When I first met her ten years ago,

I was told she was in her 70s.

But that can’t be.

Back then,

she walked bent,

with a limp,

in frequent pain.

Each year,

the bend grew a little deeper,

the limp a little harder,

the pain a little stronger,

until one day

she fell

and never got up again.

She hasn’t left her mattress

for five years now.

Every time I see her,

a little more of her is gone—

a little control of her body,

a little hearing,

a little memory.

When the dementia first began,

she was haunted by a traumatic memory:

the pool of blood on the floor

when the Japanese slaughtered

her first husband in their bedroom

while she lay hidden,

pregnant,

beneath the bed.

The Japanese occupation ended in 1945.

They married young in those days—

mere children by our standards—

but she was old enough to be pregnant.

She must be in her 90s.

It’s been a long time

since I heard her tell that story.

Advancing dementia

has freed her from that trauma.

She mutters now

of more childlike things.

I lived with her and her family once,

but she remembers me no more.

Today, she asked if I, a white foreigner,

was the daughter

of the elderly Javanese woman beside me,

her own sister-in-law,

who she did not know.

She sleeps beside her daughter now,

and cries the tears of a frightened child

any time she is left alone.

Her daughter feeds and bathes and changes,

translates her babbling speech for visitors,

does all that she can.

Today, she tells her who I am,

and the woman next to me.

Several times.

She can’t hold onto it

for more than a few minutes.

Even her eyes have begun to close,

partly swollen shut with age.

It’s hard to watch,

this slow reversal,

mother become daughter,

growing more and more infant-like

until one day she returns

to the womb.

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