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The first phone call came about six months ago.
“Julie, someone broke into my house.”
Mom and Dad raced over to Grandma’s, twenty minutes away. They were met by my mother’s brother and his wife who, living only five miles distant, had already gotten there. Grandma was hysterical. Someone had broken into her house, she cried. They stole my jewelry.
Dad and Uncle Murray inspected all the locks and doors and windows and found no sign of forced entry. Mom and Aunt Cathy searched the house for other missing items. Nothing had been taken except a strand of pearls Grandma wore to mass Sunday evenings.
“Why would someone take my pearls?” she moaned as the women held her and comforted her. Meanwhile, the men looked at each other with concern. The next day, Uncle Murray replaced all the locks with bright, shiny new ones and installed a deadbolt on the front door as well as the door leading to the garage.
The robbery was the only topic of conversation for the next week. Grandma vocally missed her pearls while blue-haired cronies clucked and consoled. Mom made it a point to visit her every evening, to reassure both Grandma and herself that everything was alright.
Things calmed down after a few weeks. Although not forgotten, the pearls were mentioned less and less frequently. Then the scissors disappeared.
“Why in the world would someone steal my scissors?” Grandma wailed, frightened and confused.
“Are you sure you didn't misplace them?” Aunt Cathy asked gently, unconvinced that someone would take the time and energy to steal a simple pair of scissors.
“Of course I'm sure,” Grandma snapped back at her daughter.
Again, the men checked the locks and doors and windows and found absolutely no sign of forced entry. When they relayed the information to Grandma, she refused to believe it and checked the locks herself.
“I don't understand,” she muttered under her breath as the others watched her with growing concern.
Over the following months, more and more everyday items began to disappear. Pins, pens, buttons, thread, notes and even clothing soon vanished during the night. Grandma started to sleep less and less, fearful of thieves robbing her. Her doctor began to prescribe sleeping pills which she refused to take until Uncle Murray agreed to spend the night. Only when one of her children was around would Grandma sleep peacefully.
Still, things still disappeared. After a few months, some of the objects began to reappear, as if by magic. She found the missing scissors, tucked away in some forgotten drawer. The thread found its way back into her sewing kit where it had disappeared from.
Then, time began to escape. Grandma would lose first moments, then hours at a stretch. She wouldn't remember a visit from Mom, say, or talking to the postman when he came by. Conversations were lost to her. Mom and Aunt Cathy took Grandma to the doctor. Was there something wrong with her, they asked.
The doctor looked at them with a sad understanding.
“She’s old,” he replied. “It's natural.”
Finally, one day, Grandma did not recognize her neighbor’s boy, a strapping young man she had known since he had been born thirteen years prior.
Crying in Mom’s arms later that night, Grandma tried to explain how she felt to be aging so much.
“It’s like thieves. Thieves in the night,” she said. “Stealing away my memories when I'm not looking. Every day I wake up with less than what I had.”
Mom cried with her and silently cursed the night thieves for stealing her mother away, bit by bit.
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