Memories......

Although I am very tired, I'm finding it hard to fall asleep tonight ....... too many thoughts, feelings, memories running through my head at the moment. I cannot seem to shut them off tonight .... my mind has other ideas. The reason behind all this, for there is a reason ...... it is exactly a year today that my Grandmother passed away. I didn't think it would affect me like this .... I thought I had got over the worst of these feelings .... perhaps not ?. In the darkness and relative silence of my room, the events of that final night are playing like a film in my head today, each time I close my eyes ..... it doesn't seem real somehow, but I know I experienced it, I know I was there. ..... I know Nan is no longer here.

So many things are resurfacing in my mind, and I cannot seem to stop them at present ..... The frantic message on the answer-phone from my cousin, saying the hospital wanted us to get there quickly .... that Nan was sinking fast ...... the guilt of knowing that the message would have got to us faster if I hadn't been surfing the net .... the car journey to the hospital ..... the doctors talking to us ( my mum, aunt, uncle and two cousins ) , saying that she probably wouldn't last the night, that they could and would resuscitate her if her heart stopped, if we wished, but it would be kinder if they didn't ...... sitting by her bed, looking at this old, tired woman I didn't recognise any longer - that wasn't the woman I knew as my Nan lying there ....... being sent away by the medical staff so they could tend to her ..... a nurse coming to get us a few minutes later, just after midnight, to tell us she had gone .... seeing her afterwards, peacefully lying there as if she was just asleep ..... all the pain gone away ...... everyone around me crying, but for some unknown reason being unable to myself ..... returning home in the early hours of the morning, and not being able to , not wanting to sleep ... sitting up, watching over my Mum as she finally succumbed to tiredness, feeling like just for a moment our roles had changed .... I was now the one who had to look after her, not vice versa ...... so many memories of that time return tonight.

Perhaps now I have written them down, these thoughts and recollections will fade back into my subconscious again ... will allow me to sleep tonight .... but I know they will never go away completely. They will be there, just below the surface - I will just learn to deal with them, to live with them as time continues to pass ( I thought I had until tonight.... ) . They are part of my life experience now, part of me. Nothing can change that.

I hope you are at peace now Nan ..... we have not forgotten.

There is nothing left to say ...... life goes on ....... the rest is silence.