Still, never mind, eh?

Last Friday I visited my grandmother in hospital. She'd been in there for a few weeks after falling out of the lift at her flat (that's "elevator at her apartment" for my American readers) and breaking a bone in her pelvis. The accident happened 8 weeks ago and she had been on the mend, improving enough to leave the hospital to spend a couple of weeks in a care home before returning to her own place.

On the first night in the care home she collapsed and had to be rushed back to the hospital. She'd caught an infection from somewhere and it knocked her for six. She was delerious for a few days, but by Thursday seemed to be more like her old self. When my mum visited her on Thursday she (mum) was admonished 3 times in the first 5 minutes by my grandmother, so she must have been improving!

I went to visit her in hospital on Friday, and she seemed weak and frustrated. She's always been an independent and opinionated woman, and being laid up in hospital attached to a drip would not have pleased her one little bit. Her words were slurred, and her breathing was laboured, but she was compos mentis enough to hold a conversation. She told me that she'd managed to get hold of some cloths, and she knew that if she let go of them the nurses would tidy them away and she'd struggle to get some more, so she wanted me to take them home and give them to my brother to bring back when he visited her the next day. Fair enough, I thought. She said "I hear you're losing your nephew to a camp for a few weeks." "Really?" I replied, "I didn't know about that. No-one tells me anything!" She asked for my brother to bring her a cheese and chive or tuna sandwich on brown bread tomorrow. I said I'd pass on the message.

Now, to be fair, not a lot happens when you're lying on your back in the hospital, so she was telling me about all the tubes in various parts of her body. She said they hurt like hell, then smiled at me and said "Still, never mind, eh?" Then, being the matriarch she is, declared visiting time over as she needed to sleep. I'd visited with her for half an hour.

She died at 4 o'clock Saturday morning. The funeral was today. About 120 people showed up to pay their respects, and afterwards a small group went back to my parents house where we sat and talked (and ate!) for a few hours. We talked about everything under the sun, from my grandmother (obviously) to eBay. At one point we were talking about some of my grandfather's paintings (he was a graphic designer and a keen artist, and loved painting ballet dancers. He passed away in 1997 and I spoke about him briefly in this post). One or two people were expressing interest in some of his paintings and basically my mum and aunt said "If you want anything in particular, speak up now and unless it's specifically destined to go somewhere else, it's yours." So there were various cries of "That tea set was very nice.." and "She and I had discussed her record collection..." Coming only four hours after we'd buried her this struck me as being a little weird, to say the least.

There were many laughs in this family gathering, I don't want to give the impression it was all doom and gloom, because it wasn't. One story I'd never heard before was how she got her middle name. Apparently her mother Jean's favourite name was Tony. Obviously she couldn't call a girl Tony, so she decided that if she had a son he'd be Tony and if she had a daughter she'd be Tonette. A girl dutifully arrived, so Jean packed her husband off to the office to register the birth. "Remember", she said "her names are Sybil, and Tonette."

Rest peacefully, Sybil Antoinette.