Oh boy. Where do I start?
This has been probably the hardest year so far, of my entire life. The end of 2022 was pretty shit too. So I think I’ll start there.
November
Tuesday 8th of November 2022, would technically become the very start of this journey, though it wouldn’t start for me until Thursday. It was a Tuesday, it felt like any other. I finished work at 5, got changed, popped round to Nan’s and we left to go shopping. It happened every Tuesday, we did our shopping, I carried her trolley up the stairs, gave her a kiss, said ‘see you later Dotty, love you’ and went back to mine. Put my shopping away, had some dinner, and went to bed.
Wednesday was pretty normal. Had work. Finished work, relaxed.
Thursday was the day everything fell apart. Started work, as normal I had a patch of black mold on the wall under my window and on Tuesday I bought some spray for it. Nan was going to lend me hers, but I said I would just buy this other brand and see what it’s like. So I used it on Thursday morning while I was working. I sent her a message on Messenger and carried on working. I checked again just before lunch, and the message still wasn’t delivered.
This wasn’t entirely out of the ordinary. She has had (I still think of her in the present tense from time to time) a wonderful habit of something breaking, like the internet, or her TV, and not telling me because she didn’t want to be a bother. So needless to say, I carried on and decided I’d ring her on my lunch.
So I’m in the kitchen making my sandwich and while I’m doing that, I’m ringing Nan. She didn’t answer, again, not a huge deal, sometimes when she’s cleaning, she’ll knock the phone off the hook, or she’s on the phone to someone else. I ring twice more, it rings out both of those times too. So I grab my keys, I still have about 30 minutes of my lunch left, and she’s only next door.
I go upstairs, go in the front door, and instantly I notice the blinds are closed in the kitchen, I go into the living room, and same again. Maybe she’s in the bathroom. I call out to her. Still nothing, maybe she went out somewhere? She’d usually let me know if she did, but her going-out shoes were on the floor, and her big coat was on the couch. I go to the bedroom, still calling out to her, and then I open the door, and I see her on the floor.
My heart literally stopped. My greatest fear was walking into her and finding her, knowing she was on her own. But she moved, and looked at me, as best she could. The adrenaline kicked in for me. The first words out of my mouth were ‘What the fuck you doing down there!’
I walked over to her, she looked awful. Still nan, but not her usual 100%. She had fallen, changing her bedclothes on Tuesday night. Her foot had been caught in the sheet, and she basically went down like a sack of spuds. When she told me she had fallen, almost 36 hours previously, the emotional barriers just collapsed, and I began sobbing, while on the phone calling an ambulance. She couldn’t move, there were scrapes down her arm, she couldn’t move her legs, and I was terrified.
She was alive, barely, and I got in touch with work and told them I wouldn’t be back today, they understood. Then I waited for the ambulance, still sobbing. And in true Dotty style, she’s been lying there for 36 hours, with no food, no drink, barely alive, and she’s holding my hand and telling me to stop crying.
This is going to be a multi-post thing. I’ll leave it here for now.
