old stories

My grandmother has Alzheimer's. I have been planning a post about that for a long while but it's one of those subjects that hurts when you think about it so I never really want to get into it. She is at a point right now where she is.. gone. She doesn't know people all the time (or even most of the time) and she is so, so frail. She sits and cries a lot, and takes her shoes off and puts them back on, and she can't even feed herself anymore, much less follow a conversation. Yet.. the following incident occurred this week, and I will write it all out the long way because my grandfather (I call him Papaw) was telling a story that we've all heard many times, and it's cute.

Although both of my grandparents are from this general area, when Papaw returned from WWII, he went away to work in Ohio. I think he returned home quite frequently, though, probably in part because my grandmother was there. In any case, he was working at a construction site, and one of his coworkers accidentally hit him in the head with a two-by-four. He went off to the doctor, got eleven stitches and the weekend off. So, he came back to Kentucky, and while he was here.. he married my grandmother. When he returned to work on Tuesday, his boss came up to him and here's the gist of the conversation.

"Well, Olgie, I guess you got hurt a lot worse than I thought you did," the boss said.

"Nah, I'm fine," my grandfather said, a little confused. "I wasn't hurt that bad."

"Well, the guys said you were pretty bad off.. you alright now?"

"Yeah, I just got some stitches, it was no big deal."

"Well, the way I heard it, you got your head hit so hard that you went and got married!"

We've all heard this story before. My mom said she knew she'd heard it a dozen times in the last year. And yet, it was still something of a surprise when my silent grandmother turned to my mom, shook her head and said, "Same old stories."

She's there sometimes. I know she is.