I was in Ottawa for a few hours on Wednesday with my grandfather. He’s going to be 87-years old soon, so when he takes me places the journey is the adventure and arriving has become slightly more optional.
My grandfather and I have spent a lot of time together since I moved back here so I’ve seen the health of his body and mind decline. There have been a few mini-strokes resulting in a decline in his language skills, and there are times when it seems like he’s losing the ability to walk. But that’s mostly age related.
The evolution of his walking over the last few years has taken him from a bracket to a question mark and now he mostly resembles a reversed seven. But he’s still willing and able to get out of his apartment and just go someplace. As long as we’re driving.
We sat in a diner and talked over coffee and Diet Pepsi about the stock market a few days ago — the stock market has been his sole income for almost twenty five years now — and everything he said made sense, but he couldn’t get the numbers right. A few years ago that kind of thing drove him nuts, and he’d fight to find the right word or number, but now he’ll say “60” instead of “10,000” and not miss a beat.
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...salted lithium. 