I grow old I grow old

Today I asked Grandma what she would write on her bucket list. It took her a long time to come up with anything, because she was worried about worrying and burdening other people, and only when I told her it was all utterly hypothetical did she say if she could do anything, anything at all in the world, it would be to have a bird’s eye view of her son (my Uncle Rog) in New Zealand and his family as they move into their new house, and to go to Singapore and see all of us. ‘Isn’t it funny,’ she said, ‘at this age your horizons are so limited.’

I grow old … I grow old …         

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.         

That part of The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock always makes my heart keen. Grandma’s days are so closeted. She eats the same thing for breakfast every day: porridge with prunes and yoghurt. My arrival means that I add diced apple and cinnamon to her porridge too (diced so that her teeth can manage it), a tiny inclusion which she looks on as a great adventure. Between breakfast and lunch, while I read the books on my reading list or go for a run, she sits in front of the television, not watching. Like Natalia’s grandmother, the television is switched on simply to fill the empty soundscape - she isn’t really interested in auctions and the prices of antiques. After dinner we sometimes watch masterchef together. Sometimes we clutch hands because of the suspense. Once, faced with a chef with particularly shakey hands, she covered her face and peeked out between her fingers in horror as he attempted to plate delicate desserts.

Our conversations often go in circles, because she has forgotten what we said in the first place. 

17/12/2015 Dinner conversation specimen 1, repeated from numerous other dinner conversations and conversations-in-the-kitchen:

Grandma [G]: And when is this young chap coming?

Miriam [M]: On the 22nd

G: And where will he sleep?

M: In the office, on the camp bed.

G: And how do you know him?

M: He’s from my church in Singapore, and he’s studying in Oxford and is staying in England for the holidays.

G: And when will he be here?

[pause]

M: On the 22nd. 

G: How will he get here?

[I’d already explained this before and written out the details on a piece of card which she keeps in the kitchen, but often forgets that it’s there.]

M: We’ll take the train from London to Thurston.

G: Let’s write that on the calendar, shall we?

Things are always written on the calendar, little notes (Christmas cards / Fred himself? / Christmas cards? / Presents for grandchildren etc.) But she forgets that she writes them there. It must be so unsettling to forget and forget - the comfort and security of assurance and concrete plans is lost to the nebulous tides of the mind.

 ‘Is this the key to the back door? I don’t know if this is the key to the back door. I’m getting so forgetful!’

And yet, she is still my sunshine in these grey winter days. Every night I hug her goodnight and she says ‘God bless you, darling’ and thanks God for our day. Tonight as I showed her how to rub coconut oil into her skin as a moisturiser, she was glowing (with oil and excitement) and said ‘This is like food for our skin! We need some coconut oil for our souls!’ And when I say ‘Goodnight Grandma, God bless you,’ she says ‘He has, oh he has’

She just walked past me up the stairs on the way to bed and told me: ‘Wonderful starlit night -absolutely black velvet skies and the stars are like jewels.’

Small adventures that Grandma and I have gone on:

1) We escape to the tropics some nights as we rub coconut oil on our faces and arms and legs

2) Once we went to New Zealand on the backs of whales, as we watched Witi Ihimaera's Whale Rider

3) We took the bus to Bury on day, and looked at the children skating on the outdoor ice rink (and also got her a 2016 calendar)

4) Sometimes we travel all over England in her ‘a day in the life’ book of photographs of daily life from across the country, lovely, real, beauty-in-normality photographs

5) Or we travel through time when we look at the old photographs from Auntie Shelia’s house, of Grandma and Auntie Sheila when they were toddlers, or even of her Father as a young man in the army ‘Somewhere in France’ - Often weary, always cheery