I’d like to share another story about how cannabis has helped my family. My grandmother passed away a few days before her 102nd birthday. She had a good long run that began in rural Kansas and ended on the southern coast of Maine. My folks took her in for the last 15 years of her life rather than mothball her in some raisin ranch. If you ask me, more children should take their parents in. Since they brought us into the world it is only right that we are there for them at the end of theirs. But I digress…
Towards the end of her life, grandma had a visiting caretaker that came seven days a week. The caretaker didn’t have to, but she really loved my grandmother, so she gave up her days off. Grandma had lost the ability to string a complete sentence together, so the two of them developed a semi-verbal way of communicating with each other. Grandma would start with a word and her caretaker would help her figure out where the sentence was going. It was really cool to see the two of them chatting away in their shorthand and I was very grateful that grandma had someone to spend a good deal of time with every day.
One day, I got a call from her caretaker telling me that grandma was singing at the top of her lungs and bouncing up and down uncontrollably on her bed. I said that was wonderful and asked if she thought grandma’s ability to speak a sentence had returned? The caretaker told me grandma was so active because overnight she had gone into septic shock. Knowing that my grandmother would refuse medical care due to her religious beliefs and a general distrust of doctors, I told her caretaker I was coming over with the only thing I could think of that might help, medicated tincture.
When I got there, grandma was singing “Blue Skies” by Irving Berlin. She recognized me with a smile and started the song over.
“Blue skies
Smiling at me
Nothing but blue skies
Do I see”
I sat down next to her with the hopes of slowing her calisthenics. I showed her my tincture bottle, told her that it was marijuana, and that it could help. She nodded her head and stopped singing long enough for me to put a few drops under her tongue. I tried to tell her to keep the tincture under her tongue, but Irving Berlin took precedence, so she swallowed most of it. However, some must have stayed under her tongue long enough because within 10 minutes and a few more rounds of Blue Skies she had stopped bouncing and singing.
Her caretaker and I tucked her back into bed. When she was settled and I had given her a kiss on her forehead, she looked me in the eyes and said, “Jeffrey, I am calm now.” It was the first complete sentence I had heard her speak in months and yet another example of how cannabis helped my family.
How can you approach the topic of cannabis with grandparents?
Jeff shares his experience in this short video.
If you have any family stories you would like to share, please reach out at jeffrowse@myfeelstate.com
