Wrestling with Grandma

A short story of my epigenetic saga with anxiety

It is a bright sunny morning, the spring is plush with the invigorating smell of flowers and the birds are cheerfully chirping. A little girl is born to three siblings in a stable upper-middle-class family in Cairo, Egypt.

The year is 1938.

1940 is the year her father dies of pneumonia.

She isn’t even two. The family had to hustle because the mom could not work at that time. They lived below their means. She never got all the toys, food, and luxury trips her sisters got.

Perhaps what was worse than poverty, was watching her mother go through that long, deep, and sorrowful heartbreak. Her first few years of life, were her mother’s worst.

That was her childhood. She sought the attention and love a baby needs from one parent only. Her father’s death remained to be the worst thing that happened to her. As time passed, the pain receded, but never quite stopped.

The family survived.

The girl grew up and took care of her mom until she died.

The girl married a military engineer and photographer

and they built a stable upper-middle-class family in the late 1950s and early 60s.

Grandpa and Grandma crushing it in the 60s

The girl was now a mother and had two daughters of her own. It is a happy story, but our girl-now-mother finds herself anxious all the time. Every moment is a threat to one of her family members, every sound is a thief trying to rob her family of their peace.

However, the family lived very peacefully. With this new family, our girl-now-mother lived the lavish lifestyle her sisters had once experienced. She can offer that un-lived life now to her two beautiful daughters. They traveled the world, they educated their own daughters.

Family Portrait - Hawaii - 1980 something

Now, in the 1980s, both daughters have their own families.

Our grandmother-then-girl could not be happier. At the same time, her anxiety grows exponentially. There are now two son-in-laws and five grandchildren, and that means more threats of her losing someone.

She exerts all her might on keeping them all safe, until one day she started feeling confused. It suddenly felt like her family could not understand her. Not her husband, not her two daughters, not her two son-in-laws, and not her 5 grandchildren.

The doctors say it is somewhere between Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. For the first time, her whole family is there for her, but suddenly she is the one who can’t be there for them.