My mother has wanderlust

7:46 PM


I'm back from the dead I guess. After a month's long absence - I have returned. 

Summer semester was murderous; however I learned a lot. I love learning; I guess that's the only reason I've committed to at least seven more years of school.

I turned twenty on Monday. It's weird - I don't really want to be older. However I am excited about starting my 21 Before 21List. While the list is not complete yet - I have a pretty good idea of what I'm going to do.

 My life has been strange lately.

My grandmother moved in with my family nine years ago. She had been living alone in Alabama, and it wasn't safe for her to live alone anymore.

We all joked about her senility and how at least it wasn't Alzheimer's. About four years ago she was diagnosed.

Everything was alright for a little while. She became too forgetful about two years ago for us to be able to travel overnight anymore. About a year ago, she started going downhill fast. 

She had never had the delusional component of the disease until around last November, She developed a delusion that we were on vacation. Then she started forgetting different important people (who died many years ago) were dead.

About a month ago she started wandering the house at night. She would bang on doors looking for her dead parents and husband. She would walk up stairs in the dark. She would leave the house. 

She's 88 years old and we live in the middle of no where. 

After she attempted to attack my mother, her doctor eventually told us she had to be hospitalized for medication management. 

A couple weeks later, she's now in an assisted living.

My parents never realized how stressed they'd been for these past couple years. 

Now the wanderlust kicks in. 

My mother wants to go. She wants to get out and travel.

My parents want to live on a boat. 

They are in their prime again.

In one week my mother boards a plane with me to leave the country for her first time.

She will wander the streets of Vancouver for five days alone - 

and she is thrilled. 

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Author

Kali Kavouklis is a journalism student with a focus on photojournalism. She also minors in entomology and nematology and wildlife ecology and conservation.