You are old, said the youth, as I mentioned before.
Well, it's over, he died at 7.30 this morning. My maths was out before -- it was four years, and four days, after the death of my grandmother.
I was there most of yesterday. Bits of it were horrendous. When we drove home for some food before coming back, Mum said "I've been told your mind starts airbrushing thngs out almost immediately." And I said, "That's so weird, I was just thinking I can't remember what order things happened in", and indeed I could almost at the time feel my brain going 'shall we just not, with this'?
There were, though, several hours when he was suprisingly okay. He was confused, and only intermittently precisely sure of who we were, but he seemed cheerful and happy to see us whatever our exact names were. And he was remarkably articulate -- talking . He made jokes! The hospice nurse (who was fucking amazing) was telling him she hoped to get him into St Whoever's "as a stepping stone to getting you home" and he said "it's stepping stone to the great Research Institute in the sky."
(He was a scientist, he used to work at a research institute -- and he was a die-hard atheist, but I do like the idea of heaven being a a kind of laboratory.)
And I read him Jabberwocky and Father William, and he joined in and recited them with me. This was more or less the sort of thing we used to share when I was little (before he got bored with me when I was eleven and ignored me for twenty years, the sour old git), so. That was good.
And oh, Lord, the asking for wine, and then not wine, sherry. We'd tried foam swabs dipped in wine, which hadn't seemed to work, so, one way and another I ended up tipping wine into his mouth. So I may have in effect killed my grandfather, because although he seemed to be swallowing it he must have aspirated at least part. But he really wanted it and I wish we'd got him the sherry because we promised we would if he could manage to swallow the wine, but we hadn't any there and the decline was so steep we'd never have got it to him in that window of that lucidity.
I kept thinking of Shakespeare "a lightening before death" and "when I saw him fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers, and smile upon his fingers' ends, I knew there was but one way..." minus the flowers and the smiling, but the sheet-fumbling is dead on, and he kept making odd movements with his fingers, and then staring at and reaching out to, something about three feet in front of him. It was very strange. Both mum and I had the thought that maybe he was seeing Granny and hoped he was.
Anyway, things got bad, and at last the nurses (who could be sort of vaguely useless en masse but blindingly wonderful individually, it's hard to explain) pumped him up with diamorphine, which is actually heroin, and things got less dreadful, but also looked as if they might go on for a while. So we went home some time just before midnight, and then Mum went in again at 6 this morning, and there we are.
His constitution drew it out. The doctors had said how most people of his age come in with files as thick as a brick. He didn't. He lost a fair few of his marbles but never so many he really stopped being himself, and a few months ago he gave me a detailed lecture on isotopes. And until these last few days, he was never so weak as not to be able to dress himself and get to the loo and make tea. So that's something.
I am exhausted.
I am so glad we don't have to go back there again.
I was there most of yesterday. Bits of it were horrendous. When we drove home for some food before coming back, Mum said "I've been told your mind starts airbrushing thngs out almost immediately." And I said, "That's so weird, I was just thinking I can't remember what order things happened in", and indeed I could almost at the time feel my brain going 'shall we just not, with this'?
There were, though, several hours when he was suprisingly okay. He was confused, and only intermittently precisely sure of who we were, but he seemed cheerful and happy to see us whatever our exact names were. And he was remarkably articulate -- talking . He made jokes! The hospice nurse (who was fucking amazing) was telling him she hoped to get him into St Whoever's "as a stepping stone to getting you home" and he said "it's stepping stone to the great Research Institute in the sky."
(He was a scientist, he used to work at a research institute -- and he was a die-hard atheist, but I do like the idea of heaven being a a kind of laboratory.)
And I read him Jabberwocky and Father William, and he joined in and recited them with me. This was more or less the sort of thing we used to share when I was little (before he got bored with me when I was eleven and ignored me for twenty years, the sour old git), so. That was good.
And oh, Lord, the asking for wine, and then not wine, sherry. We'd tried foam swabs dipped in wine, which hadn't seemed to work, so, one way and another I ended up tipping wine into his mouth. So I may have in effect killed my grandfather, because although he seemed to be swallowing it he must have aspirated at least part. But he really wanted it and I wish we'd got him the sherry because we promised we would if he could manage to swallow the wine, but we hadn't any there and the decline was so steep we'd never have got it to him in that window of that lucidity.
I kept thinking of Shakespeare "a lightening before death" and "when I saw him fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers, and smile upon his fingers' ends, I knew there was but one way..." minus the flowers and the smiling, but the sheet-fumbling is dead on, and he kept making odd movements with his fingers, and then staring at and reaching out to, something about three feet in front of him. It was very strange. Both mum and I had the thought that maybe he was seeing Granny and hoped he was.
Anyway, things got bad, and at last the nurses (who could be sort of vaguely useless en masse but blindingly wonderful individually, it's hard to explain) pumped him up with diamorphine, which is actually heroin, and things got less dreadful, but also looked as if they might go on for a while. So we went home some time just before midnight, and then Mum went in again at 6 this morning, and there we are.
His constitution drew it out. The doctors had said how most people of his age come in with files as thick as a brick. He didn't. He lost a fair few of his marbles but never so many he really stopped being himself, and a few months ago he gave me a detailed lecture on isotopes. And until these last few days, he was never so weak as not to be able to dress himself and get to the loo and make tea. So that's something.
I am exhausted.
I am so glad we don't have to go back there again.