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Mod C Narrative

The document describes the narrator's relationship with their grandfather and how he started exhibiting signs of Alzheimer's disease. It details their daily routines like picking the narrator up from school and counting ducks in the park. It then explains how the grandfather began losing his memories and reliving traumatic events from his past in Vietnam. He was eventually diagnosed with Alzheimer's which helped explain his deteriorating condition.

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christina.lee1404
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23 views2 pages

Mod C Narrative

The document describes the narrator's relationship with their grandfather and how he started exhibiting signs of Alzheimer's disease. It details their daily routines like picking the narrator up from school and counting ducks in the park. It then explains how the grandfather began losing his memories and reliving traumatic events from his past in Vietnam. He was eventually diagnosed with Alzheimer's which helped explain his deteriorating condition.

Uploaded by

christina.lee1404
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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It was infinitely easier to leave all his baggage there on the roadside and walk on into

the blackness. Life was like that sometimes. Unpredictable and full of possibilities.
Like a map that had been unfolded on a table but not yet followed.

Use this stimulus for a piece of persuasive, discursive or imaginative writing that further
evokes the emotion expressed in the extract. Use at least ONE stylistic device from your
prescribed text from Module C.

“WHAT DID YOU EAT TODAY?”

“Hôm nay con đã ăn gì?” {What did you eat today?} granddad asked me.

I used to be close with my grandfather. He was my dad’s father and I have lived with my
parents in my grandparent’s garage when I was younger. I remember when I had come back
from school, he walked into the lounge room where I was eating rice and soy sauce, he then
asked, “Is the show on yet?” He was referring to the show that appeared on ABC4kids,
‘Grandpa in my pocket’.

My grandfather was the brilliant artist of my household. In his drawers, he kept long pieces of
paper with his acrylics and too often he was in the backyard drying his cork wines for his
upcoming artworks. He often offered me to draw fish and birds with him.

Monday to Friday, at exactly 2:40 pm, Grandad walked from his house to pick me up from
primary school with his green Bunnings umbrella. He would often bring an umbrella with him,
to protect me from the sun. At most times, he was carrying my bag. I would insist that I could
carry the bag myself but he ended up carrying it for me anyway. As we approached the
house, we always passed a park filled with ducks, he and I would count the ducks daily. This
only lasted a few years before our family decided it was best for my grandfather to stay at
home. He was getting older.

I thought life was like that sometimes. Little did I know, as the years passed by, my
conversations with him ended with “I am good, how are you?”, eventually reducing to a silent
bow of acknowledgement.

My grandfather started to recall his memories often. I didn’t notice. Instead of recalling the
positive memories of his time living in Vietnam, he had recalled the Communists seizing his
properties. What he had told me, was known to be the ‘Land Reform in Vietnam’. Land
Reform was accomplished from 1954-1956 by confiscating and redistributing land owned by
landlords to poor and landless peasants. Throughout this program, it resulted in the
executions of ‘landlords and reactionaries’ where it is estimated that about 13 500 people
were killed in resistance,

Who would have known that then the end was only the beginning. .

He stopped drying his wine corks for his paintings.


He started to ask where his belongings were.
He then stopped his art completely.
Every chance he had, he would reminisce about his home back in Vietnam. It seemed like
the moment he moved to Australia, a map that had been unfolded on a table but yet not
followed - he had walked into the path of blackness. Doesn’t it sound ironic? Who would
have thought that you would prefer to live in Vietnam when life here was the ideal. That is
something that I would never understand. I would never walk in his shoes.

Then one afternoon, my dad discovered that grandfather had gotten on the wrong bus. It
was strange, my grandfather had never gotten lost before. My dad told me that he had found
him wandering on the streets and drove him home. That was perhaps the first sign that we
didn’t notice.

Soon, my grandfather was advised to stay at home and if he needed somewhere to go, he
would call his children to drive him. At that time I was ignorant of his deteriorating health and
memories.

My mum who was an aged carer at the time had softly murmured to us, “I think we should be
prepared. It seems bad now.”

She had seen this happen so many times during her career as an aged career, she had
foreshadowed and predicted the outcomes of why my grandfather had begun behaving this
way.

It was soon then the news came out that he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s is
the most common cause of dementia and a general term for memory loss and other
cognitive abilities serious enough to interfere with daily life.

Everything made sense.

Reliving traumatic events is not easy, but for Alzheimer’s patients, it happens frequently.
This truly meant that recalling his traumatic memories was eating him alive.

Now every time I see him, I ask, “Hôm nay Ông Nội đã ăn gì?” {What did you eat today,
Granddad?}

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