Little Doll

My Grandma used to speak like six different languages. She moved from Romania, to Israel, and then here when my dad brought her to stay. She went through Auschwitz concentration camp and came out alive some years later with only a portion of her family and a serious need for denchers. Apparently some Nazi had found her in the kitchens looking for potato skins to eat and decided that a nice punch to the face would suffice as punishment. I wonder if she ever ate potatoes after that.
Well the only Grandmother I've ever known was the partly senile old woman who taught me Yiddish and sang me songs, and then forgot that she had taught me that Yiddish and had already sung that song, and so she did it again. And her and my dad would just fight and fight, all the time. Because she said there wasn't any food, but her fridge was stocked to bursting point, or because she'd finished all the alcohol and he hadn't yet bought her more, or because her cigarettes were running out and she'd forgotten she had already told him that several times. Even I got impatient with her, and I was a patient little kid I think, for the most part anyway. But we didn't know then that she was in the early stages of Alzheimer's. Now we know. She can't live on her own anymore, so she's in an old age home. That is a feat in itself considering she wouldn't hear of such things when she still had half the mind to be asked. Now she believes she's been living there for years and years. (It's been two.)
Her hair is a shock of white. She's a little girl again. She cries of happiness when we come to see her, and asks how we found her, how did we know where she was? Over and over. She says my dad's nickname over and over again, I don't think she remembers the name she herself gave to him at birth. I'm sad about it, but it doesn't kill me. It doesn't tear at my heartstrings or make me cry, because frankly, we were never very close. I love her, sure, but I don't feel much different about her than I did five years ago. Is that bad? I think it is. I blame myself for not getting to know her.
She doesn't know who I am. She doesn't know my name or even recognize me. I'm the only grandchild she has, but she can't remember me. If we prod and question a lot we can get her to remember that she used to sing to a little girl sometimes.