I went grocery shopping with my grandmother and her caregiver today. As we were unloading bags from the car, I was struck with this sudden memory, a full on flashback of the time Brian and I visited grandma back in 2003, when we first moved to the West Coast.

I guess grandma must have been about 81 then, and she was oh so much healthier. A little prone to worry, maybe, but not nearly as bad as today, where the gaps in her memory get filled in with imagined illnesses and tragedies. She was always so active, my grandmother, and when Brian and I came back from the grocery store with her, she refused our offers of help, piling her grocery bags into a wheelbarrow she kept by the garage and wheeling them up to the back door with casual ease. Brian and I stood by helplessly, a little stupidly, watching grandma and the wheelbarrow moving towards us in the twilight and waiting for our chance to swoop in and grab the bags so we could at least carry them up the steps.

“When we get old, let’s be like your grandma,” Brian said.

“Agreed.”

Today grandma woke up confused. This morning she sat at the foot of my bed and wondered if my Aunt Carol, her youngest, had taken an overdose of pills, or maybe had a bad fall. She agreed with me that it was probably just a bad dream, but still she couldn’t keep from crying.

At the grocery store, too, she was muddled, and when we got home she was convinced the alarm was still on, even though she’d turned it off herself. “I think Carol lost a lot of money,” she said. “She left it in her classroom and forgot to lock the door.” Carol laughed when I called her. “If only I had a large sum of money to lose.”

As the day wore on, grandma got better. We went for a walk, and admired the architecture of some nearby houses. “Like a castle!” she said. “I bet it costs a fortune to heat,” I replied. I guess I was a bit gloomy from the morning, too.

After we got home, we looked through a picture album while we drank our tea. “Where do they live now?” I asked, pointing to some of my father’s cousins.

“They moved to California.”

“Oh!”

“And then there was a huge fire that raged up the coast, and they were trapped.”

“Really?”

“Oh, but first they got tuberculosis.”

Everyone gets tuberculosis in my grandma’s stories lately. I don’t know what that’s about.

Anyway, then we had dinner, and then we settled in for a night of PBS, first the Human Spark and then the Audition. The latter programme (see that extra ‘me’ there? I’m in Canada) chronicled the Metropolitan Opera’s annual National Council auditions, where young opera singers from around the country compete for a cash prize, a chance to sing at the Met, and a jumpstart on their opera careers.

Grandma’s not a huge opera fan, but she seemed to enjoy the show for the most part, making comments about various singers’ abilities and mannerisms and watching fairly raptly. With about a half hour to go, though, she’d had enough and decided to go to bed.

“I’ll be up in a bit,” I said. “I want to see who wins.”

“Oh yes,” said Grandma. “The ghost!”

Seems like the ghost always wins.