August

So. August 12^th, the date of my last post and the day before my birthday. I just want to say my birthday was fantastic. I didn’t do much. First, let me tell you something. My Grandmother, who I live with, and I were at the shops a few days before. She was moaning about what to get me and I was giving the usual helpful response, of ‘nothing, you don’t have to get me anything’, and she was giving me this look, you know? The one that’s like an exasperated shut up kind of thing.

Side note: enjoy this picture of the pigface she looks at every time she goes for a smoke (if anyone asks, she doesn't smoke)  

 Anyway, we walked past this jewellery place and my Gran saw these earrings. My ears are pretty sensitive, so I kept saying I needed to get proper ones, silver or gold. Nothing fancy or expensive. Just something that wouldn’t irritate me. I like silver. I think it goes with my tan a little better. So, we saw these tiny star ones in silver, super pretty, and my Gran’s like, ‘do ya want those?’ and all I said was, ‘you can’t buy my birthday present while I’m with you.’ Absolutely stupid, y’know? It was a passing thought, like I wanted someone to go on an independent trip to buy something for me to feed my ego. Long story short, she drives back to the shop while I’m at school and she buys them for me.

My birthday rolls around and she hands me these lovely little star earrings and a card and I love it and I’m thinking do I give her a hug? And normally she’s not a huggy sort of person. Generational thing, British thing, her thing, I don’t know. But, normally at birthdays or Christmas or something we do that hug and the awkward kiss on the cheek thing. This time, we didn’t. When I get back from school she’s also baked a cake. This awesome Victoria sponge with plum jam in the middle because she can’t eat strawberry jam. The pips and her dentures aren’t a great mix, and she leaves out the cream so in case we don’t finish this cake, it’ll keep for a while. And so we have a slice before dinner because she says she wants to try it and I'm not complaining, but she's made this roast for me because I love her roasts, and now we've got to eat that, and she's complaining all the way through, why did you let me eat the cake before and not after and stuff.

So we do that, and I promise to watch Peter Rabbit with her, the new movie later in the evening because we have dinner super early, it's a British thing, but I don’t because I want to watch anime on my computer, so I go and hide in my room, because we can always watch Peter Rabbit later. And I make this plan, that I’m going to go to bed at 8:30pm because my sleep has been all over the place lately and I want to wake up on my first full day of being an adult all refreshed and amazing. So I do that. But when I wake up, I’m still tired; maybe I overslept or I accumulated too much sleep debt as they call it. Something. Anyway, it’s a short day at school and as I’m an adult I call myself in sick, which my Gran loves, not that I’m missing school, but that I call in because she hates calling the school. Stresses her out. So I’m going to spend that day home, it’s decided. Just to clarify, it’s not August 14^th, the day after my birthday. 

Also, I have this project due for Biology. Some poster, so I procrastinate until 10am. Gran’s got a migraine, so she was laying down. I gotta go to the shop to pick up some supplies for the poster that I don’t want to do, because if I’m gonna stay home I may as well make the most of it. Gran really didn’t look too good at this point, so I tell her I’ll call the doctor for her when I get back, try and get her an appointment. On my way out, I bump into our neighbour, who’s a nurse, and she was telling about our other neighbour, who’s super dodgy and did a runner to another state. I’m thinking about Gran and I say ‘she’s pretty sick’, but I think my neighbour thought I was saying that Gran was worried sick about the neighbour that did a runner because she’s young, and Gran always was pretty worried about her anyway, so I say bye quickly and run to the shop.

 I take so long to decide stuff, so I was at the shop forever, umming and ahhing about what to buy, and I pop by the pharmacy to pick up some Panadol for her, and I tell myself if the lady pharmacist is on, because she knows Gran, if she’s on then I’ll tell her Gran’s symptoms and see what she says. Maybe even get her to come over, because we live right across the road, but she wasn’t so I just buy the Panadol and go. And all this time, I’m thinking something’s wrong, but that makes me not want to go back to the house, because I can feel something’s wrong but I think it’s in my head. When I open the door my Grandma’s on the floor. Stupid me, I ask ‘are you on the floor because of a migraine, or did you fall’, not even worried like. I said it casually. I used to get migraines as a kid, terrible ones. Couldn’t walk, whatever, and I would put my head on the floor to keep my head cool to soothe the pain, so for some reason, it seemed like the right question to ask. 

But she’s not really responding. But she says her head hurts and she wants a wet towel for her head and a bucket because she feels sick, so I go to the sink and wet the towel and wring it out and pop it on her forehead, and I get the bucket, but even though it’s right there she can’t see it, you know? And even when the back of her hand touches it, she doesn’t seem to realise it’s there. So now I’m thinking it’s time to call an ambulance, stupid me didn’t figure that out sooner. I tell Gran that’s what I’m gonna do, and an ambulance’ll be coming. 

So I dial 000, that’s what the emergency number is in Australia and this guy answers, and I start telling him what’s happening but he just keeps saying which service do you need? Because 000 is police, fire brigade and ambulance, so finally I say ambulance and then this other guy picks up, and then I’m like okay, this is what’s happening, and he asks if she’s conscious and I’m in the kitchen at this point because that’s where the phone is and she’s in the hallway and I just tell him, ‘yeah, I think so’, without even checking, because I’m scared, and so I go over to her, and she asks what’s happening and I tell her an ambulance is coming again, paramedics are coming and she says, ‘that’s good, they’ll know what to do,’ like she knows I don’t know what I’m s’posed to do, and her face is all red, and her eyes haven’t been open since I came home and then she sort of gurgles, and I can tell she’d not conscious anymore so I tell the guy and he asks if she’s breathing and she’s kinda quiet but she is but he’s already telling me to do CPR, so I try with one hand while I’m holding the phone, and I know it’s not what I’m meant to be doing because she is breathing, and I hang up the phone by accident and stop and thank god he calls back, and he tells me to make sure the door is open so the ambulance people can get in, and I tell him it’s open and then they arrive. 

It’s this chubby lady and this skinny trainee, and she has to cut Gran’s shirt, and I tell her it’s okay, Gran doesn’t even like that top, but I don’t actually know if she does, I just say it. And the chubby lady keeps telling the trainee to hurry up, but she tells me it’s not looking good. I have this neighbour, the husband to the nurse I mentioned before, anyway he was a paramedic for 20+ years, and Gran always said if anything happens go get him, but I didn’t, I didn't think, but he comes over because he sees that ambulance, and he helps them move the couches so they can get her out on the stretcher and get her into the ambulance. And my French tutor shows up, apparently he was just stopping by for a chat, but then I have to explain to him what’s going on and then my neighbour, the retired paramedic, says he’ll drive me up to the hospital, because he said if I go with her, she’d going to be having CAT scans and stuff and if I go with him, it’ll give me some time to grab some stuff. 

So I grab stuff and go up with him, and it seems like forever that we were waiting there, and I can go in a see her and my French tutor is a part of my Gran’s church, so he tells her priest, and he drops by so my neighbour can go home so someone’s with me, and we sit next to Gran, and he reads her some stuff, and then we go to this room we were in before that smells like air freshener and a neurological something or other comes in and tells me it’s a stroke, a really bad one, and then she asks if I understand, and I say I do, and she said there was nothing she could do, and I didn’t ask if it was because she couldn’t do anything because of Gran’s age or because there was nothing she could do, so I just nod, and then they move Gran to a room, and it’s tiny and there’s no window and I keep thinking that Gran would like a window, because she wanted to be a florist once and flowers are nice and sun is nice and people keep stopping by from her church to see her and stay with me, and I kept asking about the water, because they didn't give her an IV and she can't swallow, so I'm worried she's going to dehydrate and no one would tell my why they wouldn't give her an IV other than it wouldn't make any difference but I still didn't understand but I was too scared to ask about it again.

The nurse comes in, they’ve been giving her shots to help with the pain. She wasn’t going to regain consciousness, but they said she could probably still hear me, and if she was in any discomfort, the shots would help. Anyway, the nurse comes it with some water, and a sponge on a stick to dab in her mouth to keep it moist so it doesn’t blister, because she can’t close her mouth anymore.  But when the nurse does it Gran kinda coughs or something and the nurse looks so scared and it’s okay, but Gran isn’t scary, she just didn’t look like herself and the shots were making her swell, but the nurse left the cup of water so I could do it for her, which I did. And I was worried about her skin, because her skin’s so nice, so I got some moisturiser for her and made sure her hands were okay because she always tried to look after her hands because they were rough from so many years of cleaning and working, so she’d put hand cream on them all the time, and I comb her hair because she’d hate that her hair was messy. 

I stayed with her all night, and the priest stayed and then they said that they could transfer her to palliative care, where there'd be a window but there was no guarantee she'd make the trip, but she would've hated to stay there in that tiny room so I said yes and I rode with her in the ambulance to the ward and it was nice, like a house and there were rooms and the nurses were so lovely and they said on Friday they have a scone night and they let me pick out Gran's blanket, so I made sure it was nice, and the nurse gave me some dry mouth spray for Gran because she said if she would hate it if her own mouth was dry so I used that. And then they had to wash her down, but Gran doesn't like people touching her, so I asked if I could help because I thought Gran would hate it less and I watched this TED talk years ago that said you're actually allowed to ask stuff like that and the nurse said of course I can, and after everyone left so we could wash her I told her a lie and said I'd helped wash disabled kids as a camp leader, because I didn't want her to think I couldn't do it. Gran would've been rolling her eyes internally, I'm sure. So after we wash her down and get her all comfortable, someone says I should go have a shower and one of the ladies from church had brought me a change of clothes the day before so I could change but I didn't want to leave Gran, but eventually I had a shower and then I came back and I sat by her and my french tutor, because he's also a retired priest stopped by and read to her more, and he was talking about French names and how if you say terrible English names in a French accent they sound better, like Agnes becomes Agnyeese in pronounciation, and the people that were there, we all laughed and then Gran coughed and went purple, and she couldn't breathe so I pressed the button, and the nurse came and shook her head and everyone went out but me and I sat by her and I played her and her Husband's song that was playing when they had their first dance so she could hear it, even though she couldn't and her and her Mother's song, I'd been playing her music before when she was at the hospital too and they let me stay there until the funeral men came and they wanted to take her jewellery off, but I didn't want them too because it's hers and it should stay on her.

On August 15^th, 2018, my Grandmother died, and I’m writing all this down because it’s important; everything she did, and everything in her life is important. And she was a great Mother, and wife, and Grandmother. And she loved her children and flowers and George Clooney and she is so important, and she deserved so much.