Jan 16, 2008 20:06
Just to let people know...
My Auntie Mary, who is my Grandma's sister, was rushed to hospital around a month or so before christmas. She had collapsed in the bath at home. The doctors believed that she had had a minor stroke, but was bleeding into the bathwater, so they needed to do further tests to find out why. Turns out she had cancer of the bowel. The doctors gave her a maximum of four months to live, if she was lucky, but said that she probably wouldn't survive past christmas.
She was a very poorly lady. Overnight, she went from being an independent, resourceful woman to a complete invalid. She lost all of her dignity, was covered in bed sores and couldn't even get out of bed to go to the toilet. She was also in an awful lot of pain. Her weight plummited and, a week before christmas, she told my grandma that she wanted to die.
She made it through christmas. We weren't allowed to give her cards or presents, because she couldn't open them, or read the cards, and had so little space around her hospital bed that she wouldn't have had anywhere to put them anyway. I wasn't allowed to see her. I contracted Novovirus not long after she was admitted, which developed into a chest infection which eventually kept me off work for a fortnight. I doubt they'd have let me see her anyway; I've been told that she wasn't my Auntie Mary towards the end.
On the weekend of the fifth of January, my Auntie Mary died.
Her funeral was today. It was lovely, a deeply christian affair. We sang hymns and read prayers, and the vicar who took the sermon was lovely. Seeing the coffin up on the pedestal, knowing that Auntie Mary was inside, was unreal. I always thought she'd be around forever, she was such a strong woman.
I miss her terribly. Knowing that she's no longer there, sat in her armchair watching Deal or no Deal, or with her nose stuck in a book, or talking on and on not letting anyone get a word in edgeways...it's like a knife through the heart. She would always give us chocolate whenever we went to visit, or send it with grandma with the promise that it'd be given to us. Every birthday and christmas came with a card, usually with £20 inside. We didn't get cards this year, just the £20. I wish we'd had a card...
Auntie Mary will never be forgotten, and she leaves behind a lot of very sad friends and relatives.
God bless her, she's with Uncle Gord now.