Jessie
I’m told that around 16.30 she moved her head to one side and breathed her last two breaths. Two months ago she told my mum that she was “frightened of getting better”. This was my gran, Jessie who died yesterday.
I don’t feel sad. I feel glad for Gran. I feel relieved for her because she didn’t want to be here anymore without Tommy, my Papa. She didn’t want to be moved into a nursing home, unable to see, unable to walk, far away from the house she’d lived in for over 50 years.
She would have made friends in the nursing home, I’m sure. She was a right good laugh. She was cheeky, and opinionated, and animated, and always had good chat. When I would visit her from University, we would go shopping in the precinct and you couldn’t get ten yards without Jessie meeting someone she knew. She knew everybody. She had lots of friends. She would have definately made an impact in the nursing home she was due to be moved to today. Finally up to Aberdeen beside her family from her home in Glasgow. If she hadn’t become seriously ill on Saturday.
She had decided that if she was going to be denied release from her increasingly long life that she was going to have to do something about it herself. She made herself ill, she ran out into the garden and made a lot of noise about getting an ambulance. She had a complete and utter strop about being 86, widowed, blind and bored. She lost her temper and made a complete fuss. That was what she was like all her life; throwing strops, being a madam. She couldn’t just pick up the phone. Where’s the fun in that? Where’s the drama? By her own admission she had been a spoilt brat as a child, running rings round the older sisters who brought her up when their own mother died when Jessie was only 14 months old.
“All my sisters died when they were in their seventies. Why not me?”
She went into Gartnavel hospital at the end of January with a largely made up complaint. She admitted to my mum that she had “lost her temper”. She wanted something done, but she didn’t know what. We had been trying for years to convince her to move up near us. She was having none of it.
In the hospital, she let me and my sister into a secret that she hadn’t been taking her medicine. She showed us a handful of pills that she had stashed in her dressing gown with a wee smile. We also found some under her bed. Ever the cheeky madam. We knew she was giving those nurses and doctors hell. But apparently yesterday a few of them were in tears when it was all over.
Within a week of seeing her and laughingly declaring, “There’s nothing wrong with you gran,” the hospital-bred MRSA and Dificil viruses found their way to her and she got her wish; she became ill for real. She began to see her long dead sister Margaret, the woman who had effectively brought her up, sitting beside her.
She also had to be reminded that the reason Papa hadn’t visited was that he was dead.
“Oh, I thought that must be why. Or else he would have been up” she’d say, very matter of fact.
When I last saw her, she was small, angry, rude and nasty to everyone. She didn’t even take me on. In fact she was horrible to me and my mum. The cheeky, funny lady who would give you a “big squeeze” til your eyes popped out your head had gone leaving someone else in her place that I didn’t recognise.
Last night when I fell asleep I smelled her scent and felt her jumper against my chest as she gave me a “big squeeze” for the last time.
I really felt it.
I don’t feel glad anymore, I feel so sad.
There’s to be “no fuss” at her funeral on Friday, says my mum. But Gran liked fuss, so we’ll just have to see about that….
Quote of the Week …Kinda: Dysfunctional? Us?
It’s been a shit week in the House of the Flying Martinis. I didn’t realise how much losing Jessie would devastate me. I’ll spare you the details, I’m not too good at confessional stuff. I was fine on the day it happened but come Tuesday I fell to pieces quite spectacularly. Writing that blog about Jessie on Tuesday morning pretty much started it all off. I needed a bit of release and punting my feelings into cyberspace seemed to do it for me.
Anyway out of all the crap came forth a bit of sweetness in the form of my brother who is providing this week’s “Quote of the Week… Kinda”.
On Tuesday night I was in a state, to put it mildly. I tried to phone my sister- engaged. I tried to phone my brother- no answer. I tried to phone my Dad, left a message for him demanding that he get a phone put in his shed. Around the same time, my mum who has been trying to get hold of dad all day, phones from Glasgow to leave an umpteenth irate message about him phoning her back. She also retrieves all messages from her house phone and hears my message to Dad.
She clearly thinks, “If MisssyM is phoning Dad for consolation, things must be bad”
She phones me immediately and I am hysterical about Jessie. It all just came out. Mum gets full force. Now I realise this is all a bit depressing but hang on, this is where the funny bit starts. I wail at my Mum before she hangs up, “I looovvvve you Muuuuum!”. My family doesn’t really do “I love you”. But it doesn’t mean we don’t.
Within ten minutes my dad is at the door. He may as well have arrived on a white horse, dressed in armour, with a big curly black moustache and a sword. He has a glass of wine, stays for about an hour and we talk about politics. Like we do.
The next day my brother phones me. This is what he said,
“Mum is really worried about you. She told me that you said you loved her. Isn’t it funny that someone saying that you love them in our family sets off a red alert. That’s so us. Right, here’s what I want you to do. Pick up the phone, phone Mum and tell her you don’t love her. That it was all a mistake”
That made me laugh.
