With you in your dreams...
I hate to join in with the current ‘funeral entries’ of this week, but I feel like I must write about what happened today so that I may look back on it and you know, just depress myself.
My nan died on Saturday morning. I knew she’d died before my mum even broke it to me, probably because she came into my room at 4am and said, ‘I have to go to the hospital. Your nan is really ill - I think she’s going to die.’ Although you don’t really take it in when you’re asleep. Its strange how you can tell something awful has happened from the way people move or from the way they say, ‘So, how are you feeling today?’ which my mum had never asked me before in my life, minutes before she informed me that my nan had ‘gone.’
It wasn’t exactly a big shock, seeing as though she was 91 years old and she has been suffering a hell of a lot for roughly 10 years or so from a list of diseases and conditions that is so long I don’t even know them. She was constantly in and out of hospital and stupidly, so so so stupidly, I didn’t even go to visit her this time because of too much homework and sheer laziness. And that is always when death happens, when you’re completely unprepared. I remember being really annoyed at my old rabbit one night because he kept asking for attention and I was trying to do my maths homework. I kept shouting ‘Go away!’ at him before stuffing him back in his hutch and telling my mum that sometimes I really hated him. Then the next morning, I opened his hutch and he fell out on to the floor at my feet because he’d had a heart attack. He died a few minutes later.
I know losing a rabbit is different to losing a relative (although he was my favourite ever pet) but I was giving an example of how life can be such a bitch. The only time I didn’t go and see my nan, and this had to be the time that she died. I didn’t go and see her and now I’ll never see her again.
This morning was the funeral. It was just so upsetting going along in that car with her coffin in the car infront, staring at the words ‘Nan’ written in flowers. As they lifted out the coffin, I couldn’t help but burst into tears, although I felt a bit stupid being the only one crying at that point. I’m not good at dealing with death, especially seeing as though this is the first really close relative that I’ve lost and been old enough to remember.
Later at the crematorium, there was more crying watching the curtains close and the coffin disappear forever. Then they played the world’s saddest music into the room, which I thought was just a bit silly.
The most heartbreaking moment of the day was when we’d just left the crematorium and someone asked my mum if she was okay and she said ‘No.’ I hate seeing my mum upset. Then as someone consoled her, there was no-one to console me. I felt silly just standing there weeping on my own but then Lois dashed over and offered a shoulder, which I needed. She even ruffled my hair, I felt like a little girl again.
The Evil Children attended. They’re my nan’s children who all abandoned her for years and left my mum to look after her all alone, even though she isn’t her mother. The only contact they had with her were a few crappy cards at Christmas and birthdays, and that was only two of them. I guess they came today out of guilt but they couldn’t even talk or speak to us, not that we wanted to talk to those bitches anyway. I don’t even understand how they did what they did. How could you just leave your mum without even telling her where you live or ever talking to her again?? My nan spent most of her days asking herself is she’d been a bad mother and what she’d done to deserve that kind of treatment. She was one of the kindest, loveliest people ever and they wouldn’t even know. I really wanted to hit them, or at least ask them why they’d been so cold-hearted. But I didn’t. I shall just carry this burden of hate for them forever.
Its times like this that I really hope heaven exists because my nan believed in it so much and I want her to be there. There are so many things I never go to say to her. She never knew that I’ve met ‘those boys with the nice hair’ (Hanson) and I never got to show her my sketchbook (purely because it has nakey people all over it and she’d be horrified). She was so interested in my drawings, saying that I was just like my dad. At least she got to meet my boyfriend and she died knowing that at least one of her grandchildren isn’t a mutant. That would have made her very happy. If she’d only lived a few months longer, she would have seen Michael graduate.
Although I’m still rather distraught over the whole matter, it has encouraged me in some ways. All I want to do is make her proud of me. ‘Our Elisabeth’ as she called me, is apparently the ‘clever’ one of the family and ‘the one that can do whatever she puts her mind to’ so that is what I must do I guess.
Sometimes it gets so hard that you just feel like giving up (and no Phil, not a suicide thing), I mean giving up trying to succeed in everything. But I want to. I want four As and I want to go to one of the top universities and I want to do medicine and continue the job that someone very close to me can no longer do. I want to do it for my nan. And for me.
Lis