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I'm ready to give up, actually.

My grandmother lives in California with my great-grandmother, grandfather, and uncle. She is addicting to sleeping pills. In fact, she is addicted to pills in general. She will literally take any pills she can find just to take them. She takes money from everyone else so that she can buy pills. She suffers from dementia. She can't talk anymore.

Now she's missing.

She's been missing for a day. She disappeared when my uncle--carelessly, I guess--took her grocery shopping. No hospital has found her, the police have no clue, and nobody anywhere seems to know where she is. My uncle drove around all night looking for her. He's still looking now. "Someone probably took her in," the policeman said. If that was true, why didn't they call the police? Now she's lost somewhere in Garden Grove, California.

I don't really know how I'm supposed to feel about it. I didn't know her very well, honestly. She bought me my first Batman action figure. I still have it. I remember her car. Her hats. We still have her dog. I remember her being happy to see us. The last time I saw her, she didn't remember me. She didn't remember anything.

Actually, I'm not sure about that part because she didn't say anything.

These last few years she has been a burden to her family. Her drug problems. Her refusal to get help. Her cancer. Her dementia. Her refusal to let her family help her. She has had a crazy, ridiculous life. And now she's lost. She was my grandmother.

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