She complains about her joints, but she doesn’t want to go to the doctor. She complains about the interior of the house turning into a storage room, but she won’t cooperate when it comes to throwing away things that are taking too much space in the house. She comments against my dad and aunt’s mouthy and nagging behavior but she doesn’t see that they actually got it from her.
My grandmother is 73 years old and is a living, breathing plethora of contradictions, some of which, I admittedly find annoying. However, it does seem unfair when I say that especially when majority of how I feel about her tendencies are just exacerbated by the pandemic. I must admit that I have my own set of biases.
In other words, these minor inconveniences I am experiencing are not entirely her fault. It’s just a side result to the combination of everyone’s elevated neuroticism of being placed inside one house for a long time with limited access to the outside world —especially her. At the peak of quarantine, she was part of the cohort that was restricted from leaving the house. Our dogs and cat knew more freedom than she did, since she wasn’t allowed beyond our green compound gate for a long time. Her usual morning routine of waking up early and going to church was put to a halt. No more prayer meetings with her fellow senior friends, and little to no wandering around the neighborhood blocks.
I can empathize of being abruptly jailed in the house and suddenly restricted to a quarter amount of movement I was used to.
I experienced it in Lapu-Lapu when I had no access to the studio for months, and eventually lost my job after but I could tell that it was more difficult for my grandma especially since people her age need regular amounts of movement for her joints to function properly.
When my grandma’s joints finally had the last straw and flared up, I experienced the highest level of frustration in dealing with senior relatives and take note this occurred during a time when my mom was in Japan. Usually, I would experience things like these during family reunions, when unlikeable topics would be brought up like family chismis, my weight or appearance, or when I am going to get married, or maybe just day-to-day complaints, but it would not last long since my mom would be there.
Now, there is no one to cushion the blow for my siblings and I ever since my mom got stranded in Japan with my dad.
Let me list down the frustrating yet funny experiences my brothers and I went through during this time, at least about my Grandmother and her joints:
- The frustration of her complaints about her arthritic joints
- The frustration of convincing my grandma to go to the hospital for a medical check-up, and to not worry about the money that entails.
- The frustration of convincing her against her insistence on “natural” remedies which she used still, but to no effect.
- The frustration of convincing her to stop being so defeatist and pro-death about her condition, when she hasn’t even taken any steps to right direction yet. I had to listen to her say “Aw, if di ma-ayo. Dad-on (If I won’t get better naturally, then I guess I’ll just die)”
I mean I know I also have those tendencies but it's just worse when someone you love has it. Kind of makes me wonder if my level of neurosis is a hereditary thing. I know I should be a good granddaughter and be there for my grandma but with the chronic complaining and all the talk about hopelessness, it actually makes me want to avoid engaging into any kind of conversation with my grandma at all.
- The frustration of listening to her being unable to eat meat (because she was accustomed to eating meat all the time).
Her frustration about the littlest of things drives us off. For example, her being unable to eat fatty meat like pork and beef anymore since it is something she is accustomed to. She does not want to change unhealthy habits and would rather want to take her unhealthy habits to the grave.
- The frustration of her unwillingness to make small steps in physical exercise even though it would help her mobility
- The frustration of knowing na she is frustrated but my brothers and I can’t really do anything about it. It kind of breaks my heart.
When we finally convinced her to go on a medical check-up, I had to savor the amount of relief of having her FINALLY listen to us.
When her joints got better because of the meds, let me tell you folks, I had never set eyes on an old woman being so joyous about being able to move. She could finally walk properly without any pain on her joints and could finally help with some of the chores around the house, but best of all, my brothers and I could finally stop hearing her complain about her joints! It was a win for everyone, yey!
But...
The non-complaining phase only lasted for about a week or so before she went business as usual again in chronic complaining (but this time about everything else) HAHA 😂. BUT AT LEAST, it was a good pause from the old routine, riiiiiiiiggghhhht?
See? I know how to look at the bright side in difficult experiences (Suuuuuuure Rox, right after furnishing a blogpost where you literally expressed your woes on your new experiences as a public-school teacher during the pandemic 😒. Click here for the article.).
It would be nice to have her be more thankful about life of course, but until now, I never gained enough courage to tell her that, and I’ve lost all the desire to tell her after attempting a couple of times.
Now that I think about it though, the reason why I find this part about my grandmother annoying is maybe because it’s also a trait I have that I don’t like about myself. I realized that I do complain quite a lot, it's one of my ways of letting pent-up emotions out. But I do try to add a bit of humor in my delivery because yakn0eE… humor is the spice of life, and even the direst of experiences could be alleviated when humor is involved.
On a side note...
Maybe I just wrote this article as a filler for my blog. I haven't written in a long time (2 months to be exact) because I got caught up in a whirlwind schedule of teaching responsibilities, module writing, research topic checking and being a messenger chatbot for my students 🤣.
The topic had to be either this or another one of my rants about my teaching job and the public school system, which mind you, could be grounds for court hearings for government employees like me. I also figured you guys don't want to be bored out of your minds reading about the same thing in my blog again and again, so I chose events about my home life instead.
What motivated me was this one comment from 
I am touched tbh.
Spare comments like these make me all the more motivated to keep writing despite my hectic schedule. I'm really grateful to be part of this community, and I promise to do my best to continue writing as long as I can ❤️.
Please stay tuned soon for my Christmas entry 🎄.