My grandmother, the octopus: a central body, and tubes coming out of her omnidirectionally.
I'd been fed second-hand information all week about how bad things had become - your dad let it slip that she might not survive; her kidneys have gone; she can't wake up and nothing's changing; no, hold on, she's sitting up in bed now.
When I saw it for myself, it was clear that things were pretty bleak indeed. Even with my head two inches from her mouth, hearing what she had to say was difficult, and translating it more difficult still. We went around in short loops, and I felt bad that I was encouraging her to communicate at all:
them's mi toes you're playing with
are we going home yet?
mercy! have some mercy
The rest of her monologue was unintelligible, and I didn't encourage her to weaken herself yet more by speaking further.
My grandmother now consists of skin and bone, with the flesh sucked away by years of illness and simple old age. Brainquakes, increasing in number and ferocity, have dimmed the intelligence which was earned by attending the school wi' a clock on t'top, somewhere in Sheffield, which was always my family's running joke. Inexplicable to outsiders, but nevertheless - you know your gran isn't stupid! She went to a school wi' a clock on t'top! The decrease in awareness has, in its turn, deadened the bright blue eyes for whom the mere opening takes now all her might. They are now turned towards I don't know where - not at me, not at my father.
Mercy! have some mercy, the whispered plea from a very sick old lady to her grandson who fears the worst, and yet welcomes its oncoming, because you've suffered more than anyone ever should. This vacuum, stripped of critical faculties and powers of recognition. This is not my grandmother; it is instead an impostor, devoid of nostalgia. It matters not if I am her grandson or the king of Spain's daughter (who had a little nut-tree), because everything that is not already long-gone will eventually be washed away by the pitiless tide of age.
It doesn't matter that you can't remember anything, oh impostor, because my mind recalls things freely enough. It remembers frying bits of banana and calling it 'Mexican food,' and it remembers cheating for all I was worth in order to beat you at Scrabble (I couldn't edge the woman from t'school wi' a clock on t'top by fair means), and it remembers ripping labels off tins, rendering them unidentifiable, and condeming you to pork chop for dinner with.... shit.... peaches! I'll kill him!
It remembers the song of the nut-tree which got me off to sleep more times than enough; how many New Year's Eves in your company when my parents permitted themselves a rare night out, leaving us to shoot tiddlywinks into an eggcup (you beat me at that, too) until it was time to go to bed, after the thrill of staying awake until beyond midnight!
It's all coming back to me, gran, and nothing can ever take it away. It's coming back to me that you used to chop firewood out t'back well beyond the age of seventy, and you'd get up at a bloody stupid hour to light t'fire so I'd not freeze when I woke up. I remember you liking John Parrott and Eric Bristow but never Steve Davis, and not so much Jimmy White, either, despite the balls disappearing at an unhealthy speed. I'm not sure whether or not you're a fan of John Lowe, but I recall that Richard Whiteley got up your cuff. A noise of disgust, somewhere between a sneeze and a sigh. Richard Whiteley!
