My grandmother died on Monday morning.
I woke up late, to at least ten missed phonecalls, and I didn't even have to ring any of the numbers to know what had happened.
I saw it in a dream on Friday, anyway, my mother's voice saying: she's gone, and I twisted like a snake in my bedclothes as the shock jolted me awake.
As it turned out, she was still alive at the point I did speak to my mother, and this time it wasn't a dream. You better come, because yer gran's on her way out. I threw on whatever clothes I could find, and commenced the race which I knew I was never going to win.
I dashed out of the flat, making for the train station as fast as I could. I'd got as far as the street named after an Australian city, where I'd lived until April, when my phone rang again. I couldn't make anything out at the other end, and I said: has it happened? ended the call, and began to cry. It was 11:25am.
When someone dies, it is beyond me to know what it is appropriate to do. Is it right to buy a newspaper to read on the train (even though I'm already too late?) Is it right to accept a sandwich and a cup of tea? Is it appropriate to feel a sense of loss one minute, and the next minute derive some sort of satisfaction because her suffering has drawn to a close at last, a good two years or so after her remaining quality of life dwindled away?
For the last couple of years, we had to watch as my grandmother was pared down by age, in the same way the water carves away at the body of a stricken ship, capitalising on its immobility and helplessness to sweeten the flesh which drops away in intervals the eye can measure. The last time I ever saw her, what remained of her mind had broken off and, thus lobotomised, she addressed my father and I only in shouts of pain, the sorts of sound made by cattle in distress, otherwise never opening her eyes.
I've not yet realised she's gone. I said before that bad news comes from the stars - it takes a long time to reach its intended recipients. That I dare not even go to see the body (of which more later) means that I cannot accept that the marbling stillness into which my grandmother has been transformed was once animate, and therefore I cannot yet accept her death.
