There comes a time when your home is no longer this warm, happy place, but rather a storage area for all your shit. That time has come for me, and though it's cold and kind of depressing, I guess it happens to everyone.

When my grandfather died things changed, and I knew they would. There was a piece of our lives that was erased and we would never get it back again. A feeling of warmth and comfort, this thought that things would always be this way. And maybe that's why death is so very painful, because it keeps lingering on and on until you either go insane or choose to ignore it. It doesn't last for a day or a week or a month, it doesn't get cured, it doesn't scuttle into remission. With each new thing you embark on, it's there, it reminds you that it will always be there, and you will always have to face it.

Maybe that's why my grandmother suffers from dementia now. As much as she yelled at him, as much as she forbade him from seeing doctors and put on this act like she was bothered by him, she loved my grandfather, and now that he is gone, she sits in her house by herself with a television and a toy poodle. There is nothing for her anymore, and my mother refuses to talk to her because any attempt she makes to help my grandmother goes against her. I don't blame her. There's only so much you can take.

What I have seen in the past few days doesn't really have a name, and I am trying to think of one. It's something like forced concern, maybe. My mother knows she needs to take care of my grandmother, but she hates doing so because my grandmother makes everything miserable. So my mother has emotionally detached herself, and she does things only out of reflex. I think my grandmother has given up, and she is sick in a different way than my grandfather. He was sick physically, and his body withered away until he was transparent. But if you looked into his eyes, really looked at them, you could see something inside of there, absorbing the last pigments of life until it all went black. I tried to figure out whether he knew what was happening, or if the drugs had shrouded that horrid little truth. He slept a lot, and some of the things he said didn't make sense, but you knew he was there till the end. My grandmother, however, is fine physically. She did have a stroke, but considering the fact that she had never been to a doctor in 71 years, that's pretty good. She is losing touch with reality, she cries and moans and they gave her medicine for depression, and now when we see her name on the caller ID we are not allowed to answer the phone.

When she goes there will be no reason to travel to Ridgefield Park, where we used to go almost every week for dinner. It will be just another dot on a map, a place I used to know. I will lose touch with my Italian identity. And I feel guilty because my life contradicts so well with hers. This is my time to go out and discover things, to shed the old and embrace the new, and my grandmother is 20 miles away watching The Price is Right while her sanity dwindles.

A month ago, before all this happened, I was getting ready to go out one night and I had this really, really strong urge to call my grandmother. It just came out of the blue as I was applying eyeliner, and it paraded around my mind until I finally decided that I would call her tomorrow because it was too late to call her now. But I never did.

She stayed over our house for a few days after she got out of the hospital. She goes to bed really early. My friends had nothing to do so I invited them over to watch a movie, and we were being pretty quiet, and she kept yelling at us to shut up. At one point, she came running out of the bedroom with her hands on her head screaming in Italian. Apparently she needed to use the bathroom. My sister had a friend over, and her dad rang the doorbell to pick her up, causing the dog to bark and thus provoking another fit of curses to arise from my grandmother. It was only 9:30.

I hope I am not like this when I am old. When I come running out of my room screaming because I need to use the bathroom, I hereby give permission for someone to shoot me.