My 84-year old grandmother and i no longer speak the same language. i guess we always had a bit of trouble - her russian laced with romanian endings and yiddish laments, my russian filthy with americanisms and 19th century dostoyevsky prose. for a while now there has also been her "what will the neighbors think" bourgeois approach to life contrasted with my randian ranting. but within the last few years, especially after having surgery, she has given up on coherence altogether, and that makes communication quite tough. we had a conversation today about a program that my mom and i want to enroll my grandparents in. basically it would replace the current nursing agency that works for them, with a different, hands-off agency, where basically my mom and i would be in charge of all the helpers rather than a random russian nurse looking to make an extra buck off the government. but the subject is not even important. the conversation felt like we weren't talking to each other. i would make a point, and then she would sigh and start talking about how her life is so hard, or how she knows this woman (whose life is also very hard), and "they" made her life terrible. i would gently attempt to nudge the conversation back to the subject, only to be rebuffed with a "you are an atheist just like your grandfather", and other similar inanities. so i, consciously and with full understanding of the violation of my own principles that it entailed, fell back on good old jewish guilt to accomplish my purpose. i guess receptivity to guilt survives much longer than rational thought, because i succeeded (not entirely as my grandmother just thinks she is going to trick me, but i will best her in the end).
ahh to die with a clear mind. what dreams.