Preview for The Time Grandma Jumped into a Lake and Transformed into a Kung Fu Warrior

I stopped answering grandma’s calls about three weeks ago. Her ranting became worse the more the dementia set in. I’d play her voicemails, and listen to her spew about a portal she’d found. How she had to defeat a flip-flop wearing crocodile and how her four-prong afro pick could morph into a bow and arrow.

The nurse verified she had been binging Kung Fu Hustle and The Last Dragon daily. The nurse also assured me this was common with dementia patients. Reality and make-believe bending in on itself as the gradual decline of cognitive abilities whittled away the strong Black woman I have known all my life.

Sometimes I forgot her — pushed her to the darkest corners of my mind, because remembering her hurt. Remembering also came with picking up the phone and calling, confronting this version of my grandmother who was a stranger to me.

When I first received a phone call from a police officer to inform me my grandma was three counties over in search of a grocery store that was two blocks away from her house, that’s when I knew.

My pillar, my matriarch, my shero—

—was fading.