Reality

Mostly this blog is pretty light-hearted and in broad-strokes, and there's not much actually about my day. I don't like giving you every day and night in detail, "describing every fart to the ounce" as a teacher friend of mine used to colourfully call it.

But sometimes it's important to write down stuff that happened, so I can go back and see what happened when, and use this blog as an actual diary. Mostly nowadays photographs act as that bookmark in time for me, but sometimes things happen when you can't, or won't, take pictures.

Take today.

My Nan (my father's mother) is very ill. She's got this thing, a tumour I think, that's stopping her from eating. I don't like to ask the nitty gritty because I don't really need to know. She's had cancer before, which went away, but now it's come back and this time, barring some medical miracle, she's not going to survive it. Last week she was given between two weeks and two years to live. At the moment it's looking like even two weeks was an optimistic estimate.

I work in the hospital where she's being cared for, and I've been to see her most days. Some days she's been up and chatty, other days lightly dozing. When she told me she'd been given not long to live, I cried, but it didn't really sink in what it meant. Nan's been ill forever. She's been in and out of hospital, always got better, or at least less ill. Some part of me said it wasn't real. She'd pull through.

Oh yeah, I need to tell you about my brother. The reason he's back from Mexico is basically some fuck-up with visas. In an ideal world he wouldn't have come back to the UK this year, he doesn't have the money to make a visit. For some legal reason Mexico wouldn't let him stay on his current visa, and wouldn't let him get a new visa or whatever while he was in the country. So he had to leave Mexico for a bit, and when he heard about Nan it kind of made sense to come here. It was a "lucky" coincidence that he had a reason to come back at the right time to say goodbye to Nan.

So it was arranged that when he got back to the UK this morning he'd go straight to visit Nan in hospital. Jane was over today and we went to the hospital a little earlier to meet them at Nan's bedside.

Nan was sleeping, and even the nurse couldn't get her to rouse. I sat waiting pensively, glad to have Jane there.

There was something very strange about seeing my parents walk around the corner, and then my brother looking tanned and tired. Suddenly my entire family were together again, in my workplace, for this. Everything was all the more unreal.

My Nan was told that Neil was there, and she made some noises, but she didn't really wake up. She opened her eyes but they were vacant and lifeless. I don't think she even saw Neil.

Then she was sleeping again. Snoring with the same "zzzz" then "plup" of flapping lips that I've seen her do countless times while dozing in front of the telly.

So, about 5 minutes after he'd arrived, I said hello to Neil. And we hugged. And I cried, and he cried.

And then it was real.