In Robert Cormier’s story, The Moustache, similar attitudes were shared between Mike and the nursing home attendant about Mike’s grandmother. Their personal opinions about the grandmother had some complimentary properties, for example, they both hold seemingly little respect for the elderly woman. The air released from Mike’s lungs when he concludes that his grandmother does remember him is almost disappointing. He was expecting her to have forgotten him and he would have to make a hopeless attempt at explaining his presence. “And I breathed a sigh of relief. This was one of her good days. My mother warned me that she might not know who I was at first.” The attendant doesn’t necessarily openly express her worries but her choice of language reflects her inner emotions. …show more content…
The attendant slyly lets her disgust for the elderly woman trickle out of her pursed lips generously coated with a sweet syrup, hiding the fact that deep down she only thought of this encounter as a job and would rather keep the communication at a simple level, with no complications. She was not willing to talk to Mike’s grandmother as anything more than a client. “ Her manner was cheerful but a businesslike kind of cheerfulness.” Mike realizes that the attendant feels this way about his grandmother by noting that she repeatedly referred to his grandmother as ‘dear’, without once mentioning her name, forcing the contact to stay on a business-type level. “I hate to be called ‘dear’ by someone getting paid to do it.” Also, the attendant believes that Mike is thinking in the same matter as her. She uses body language to try to engage Mike into a sad attempt of an inside joke, which is actually quite cruel. “The woman looked at me and winked. A conspiratorial kind of of wink. It was kind of
In this article “ The Old Man isn’t There Anymore” Kellie Schmitt writes about the people she lives with crying in the hallway and when she asks what happened she is told that the old man is gone. This starts the big ordeal of a Chinese funeral that Schmitt learns she knows nothing about. Schmitt confuses the reader in the beginning of the story, as well as pulling in the reader's emotions, and finishes with a twist.
After a decade of not seeing his mother and brother, Howard returns to his hometown in Mississippi. It is evident how thrilled he is. As the train approaches town, he begins “to feel curious little movements of the heart, like a lover as he nears his sweetheart” (par. 3). He expects this visit to be a marvelous and welcoming homecoming. His career and travel have kept his schedule extremely full, causing him to previously postpone this trip to visit his family. Although he does not immediately recognize his behavior in the past ten years as neglectful, there are many factors that make him aware of it. For instance, Mrs. McLane, Howard’s mother, has aged tremendously since he last saw her. She has “grown unable to write” (par. 72). Her declining health condition is an indicator of Howard’s inattentiveness to his family; he has not been present to see her become ill. His neglect strikes him harder when he sees “a gray –haired woman” that showed “sorrow, resignation, and a sort of dumb despair in her attitude” (par. 91). Clearly, she is growing old, and Howard feels guilty for not attending her needs for such a long time period: “his throat [aches] with remorse and pity” (par. 439). He has been too occupied with his “excited and pleasurable life” that he has “neglected her” (par. 92). Another indication of Howard’s neglect is the fact that his family no longer owns the farm and house where he grew up. They now reside in a poorly conditioned home:
There are three stages of thought for the Grandmother. During the first stage, which is in the beginning, she is completely focused on herself in relation to how others think of her. The second stage occurs wh...
The story Miss Julianne is an excellent example of patients suffering from dementia. Although one of my family members, my Nana was also a dementia patient, but after reading this textI can relate more to his situation. Miss Julianne is also a dementia patient as she keep-forgetting things and blames others, her aggressive behavior. This story relates to my personal experience, the challenges and the change in my views and opinions and resulted in my emotional response to it.
Mother, not so very. There are always a lot of us together so it isn’t so bad.” Here the
Lisa Genova’s grandmother, who was 85 years old, had been showing signs of dementia for years; but she was a smart and independent woman who never complained, and she navigated around her symptoms. Her nine children and their spouses, as well as her grandchildren, passed off her mistakes to normal aging. Then they got the phone call when Lisa’s grandmot...
“The day that I found out about my mother, I was at school,” he said, “I remember I was on the playground. Somebody came up and said ‘you’re laughing, huh?’ from behind the gate. ‘Your mother is dead.’ The man said.
I looked around at everyone in the room and saw the sorrow in their eyes. My eyes first fell on my grandmother, usually the beacon of strength in our family. My grandmother looked as if she had been crying for a very long period of time. Her face looked more wrinkled than before underneath the wild, white hair atop her head. The face of this once youthful person now looked like a grape that had been dried in the sun to become a raisin. Her hair looked like it had not been brushed since the previous day as if created from high wispy clouds on a bright sunny day.
My grandmother has a certain look in her eyes when something is troubling her: she stares off in a random direction with a wistful, slightly bemused expression on her face, as if she sees something the rest of us can’t see, knows something that we don’t know. It is in these moments, and these moments alone, that she seems distant from us, like a quiet observer watching from afar, her body present but her mind and heart in a place only she can visit. She never says it, but I know, and deep inside, I think they do as well. She wants to be a part of our world. She wants us to be a part of hers. But we don’t belong. Not anymore. Not my brothers—I don’t think they ever did. Maybe I did—once, a long time ago, but I can’t remember anymore. I love my grandmother. She knows that. I know she does, even if I’m never able to convey it adequately to her in words.
In the beginning of the short story O’Connor’s use of a dark and humorous tone allows the audience to feel pity for the grandmother. The first sentence, “The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida” shows the reader the family does not worry about the grandmother’s
The grandmother is a humorous character because during the trip, "[She] took cat naps and woke up every few minutes with her own snoring." Later, she recalled an old plantation she once visited. She then over exaggerates the plantation story and say 's "There was a secret panel in this house" ( O 'Connor 714) knowingly she wasn 't telling the truth. And of course, the grandchildren whined desperately and the family drove off to see the house with a secret
Her family life is depicted with contradictions of order and chaos, love and animosity, conventionality and avant-garde. Although the underlying story of her father’s dark secret was troubling, it lends itself to a better understanding of the family dynamics and what was normal for her family. The author doesn’t seem to suggest that her father’s behavior was acceptable or even tolerable. However, the ending of this excerpt leaves the reader with an undeniable sense that the author felt a connection to her father even if it wasn’t one that was desirable. This is best understood with her reaction to his suicide when she states, “But his absence resonated retroactively, echoing back through all the time I knew him. Maybe it was the converse of the way amputees feel pain in a missing limb.” (pg. 399)
Given our relatively short acquaintance, it startled me that I could read his face so transparently. But in the few months since Nancy and I had moved into our still unfinished house, Fred had become more than just a next door neighbor. Oh, we certainly had our differences. Fred was old enough to be my father, and our personalities were as far apart as our ages. He was always teasing, playing practical jokes, and smiling quizzically. I was quieter. Compared to Fred, one might say I was comatose. Yet we both seemed to know that we had something in common, something strong.
Gran, as I frequently called her, stood at five feet seven inches tall. She was an elderly woman in her mid-50s that enjoyed living life and helping others in any way possible, whether it is at the market selling produce, donating to a charity for the less fortunate, or participating in walk-a-thons. On the verge of going into her sixties, her behavior protruded was one of a woman in her early thirties. Dressed in a tight, knee-high khaki pants, a black V-cut top, and a black sandals, with her hand held on her hip saying, “I might be old in age, but I am young and strong at heart darling” as she responded to my comment, in my dialect, “Yuh feel you too young.” This brought much humor to the room. The joyou...
“We’ve been trying to get a hold of you for hours; I’m afraid I have some bad news your mother had a car accident and unfortunately died…”