Authors: Kirsten Rees
The taxi ride was a complete blur but I distinctly remember walking through the hospital doors and along the cool, pastel coloured corridors that smelled of cleaning products. Ward eighteen in a private room so her family could say goodbye in peace. I knew that my Grandma had had the usual illnesses that can often be expected with old age but otherwise she was energetic, positive and active. She had more life in her in her eighties than I did my twenties which only made it all the more painful because she deserved her long, full life.
As I entered the room I saw a small group of people that could have been strangers for all I knew because all I could focus on was my delicate, frail Grandmother laid on the bed. She was tucked under white sheets with her skin almost as pale and her eyes closed.
“Is she…?” I couldn’t even say the words.
She’s just resting.” Replied Matthew beside me as I realised the small group gathered around me was my brothers and my Mother who all looked equally as pale but for their red rimmed eyes. “We’ve all had a moment alone with her so if you want to sit with her we can get coffee. The doctor’s said we may have a few hours before…” His voice cracked and he looked away before walking out the door.
I sat gently on the edge of the bed, wanting to be close to her and laid my hand softly against hers. “I want to ask you to fight, to try to get better so you can stay with us. It wouldn’t be fair of me would it, if you really are ill and in pain I should let you go but I want to be selfish. I can’t even imagine our lives without you Grandma, do I just stop being a Granddaughter or will you always be with me? I don’t even know what I believe in but if it means there is even a chance I can see you again then I will believe with all my heart that there is a place we will be together again.” Her eyes flickered just a touch and I felt her finger touch mine briefly – it could have been an involuntary movement but I wanted so much for it to mean something. I tried to make peace, at least the last words we had spoken to each other were ‘I love you.’, but that night when she passed away, she took a piece of my heart with her.
I sat in the front row of the church with Joshua by my side gripping my hand and holding onto our Mother’s with his right hand so I could see the whites of her knuckles. Matthew sat in grim silence on her right and hadn’t once looked any of us in the eye. The rest of my Mother’s side of the family were all distant second cousins and sat in the rows behind us, amongst friends and acquaintances of ours and my Grandmother. The other side was taken up with vaguely familiar people from my childhood that I had to assume were my Grandfather’s relatives come to pay their respects.
I was wearing my Grandmother’s favourite dress of mine in a pale green with lace around the collar. Not one person was in black and they all seemed in good spirits if a little solemn. It’s exactly how she would have wanted it. I know she lived a full and happy life and would rather it was celebrated. It was one of the things I loved about her - she took life by the heart and made it beat for all it was worth. I hadn’t even known she was ill, I think my mother knew or at least suspected it, although she never acknowledged it. My dear, beautiful Grandmother wouldn’t have wanted us to worry about something that we could do nothing about so she made her peace with the world, spent what time she had with her family and dearest friends saying all the things she needed to and went peacefully in the night. It broke my heart to think that during the last moments we spent together, she may have known it would be our last.
I looked around the room and saw all the people my grandmother had mattered to. I saw the grief in their faces as they shared stories, I noticed the catches in their laughter and watched as gentle tears fell from their smiling but puffy eyes. She had been selfless by refusing to admit her suffering and I think in hindsight, it reinforced my decision to spare my family from my own burdens too.
I was strong for my Mother's sake and although my eyes were appropriately wet, I didn't break down. We followed the hearse to the cemetery and stood in an awkward semi-circle around the opening in the ground. There were so many people arriving that after a few minutes the circle expanded and people lined up in rows behind us.
My eyes were drawn to a figure across the other side of the cemetery, he walked carefully, going around the graves until he came to a stop in front of one of the headstones. I watched as he stood there with his hands in his pockets staring at the ground. I suddenly wondered if I would come here alone and stand over my Grandmother’s grave, and what would I say to her. After a few moments my eyes were pulled back to my family as the proceedings began and when I looked over later the man was gone and I saw the flash of black car drive under the large stone arch and out the gates.
It couldn’t have been him. Alex made a point of never visiting his brother’s grave on the day he had died or on the anniversary of his funeral. It just didn’t seem right and so it was always on his birthdays and at times like Christmas and it had taken a while even for him to go then. He recognised the stone arch and he had had black car at one point. He recalled her Grandmother had passed away in early June and Will’s birthday was on June 14
th
– it was possible. Had they been there together in the same place all those years ago?
The reception afterwards was beautiful and had the kinds of food and music my Grandmother would have appreciated. After a few hours, people began to trickle out, heading home back to their lives having paid their respects to my Grandmother and bid farewell to my family with promises of keeping in touch despite my not having seen or heard from most of them since I was a child and some I had never even met. The four of us made our way outside and pulled our coats tightly round us despite the warmth of the afternoon.
Matthew dropped me at the pavement outside my flat and I waved goodbye as they drove away. I trudged up to my door and mechanically unlocked and relocked it once inside. I had eaten only one cake all day - more for my Grandmother than out of hunger and yet I had no appetite. Walking by the kitchen I make my way to my bedroom.
Suddenly I'm aware of a noise inside the flat - it's like the mournful cry of an injured animal but more human. I freeze only to realise the sound is coming from me. And then it hits me. In the dark, alone, and like a sledgehammer in the chest. I can hardly breathe for the tightness in my lungs and I slide to the floor.
The next morning I wake in pain to I find I'd fallen asleep curled in a tight ball on the floor against my bed with only my blanket pulled over me. I awoke slowly, feeling groggy but vaguely aware any minute my mind was going to flood with memories. And it was something terrible.
My recollection of the last few days began to surface and I felt my breath choke out. My Grandmother was gone and I would never see her kind, loving face again. She often told us that she loved us all equally but each in her own special way. Once she had hugged me tightly and said ‘It may seem easier to steer clear of great sorrow or burdens in our lives, with matters of the heart, it’s all or nothing. For those that don’t open their hearts at all, I pity them since they will never know the kind of joy or true love that life can throw at us in the most unexpected ways.’
I had forgotten those words until then. I wondered what sadness had touched her life - she always seemed so happy and positive, it seemed as if she had lived a blessed life. As much as I wanted to believe her words, I think I am an exception to that rule. I gave as much I had to give and it brought only pain into my life.
With no essays or exams to distract me, I had time to think and I didn't like the direction my thoughts were going. The summer break came around and I was lost. Thankfully the one upside to using studying as a distraction and having a mediocre social life for most of the year, meant I managed to pass my year-end exams in the top five percent of my year. Even so, I was starting to realise that I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and if I managed to finish the course, my friends and I would go our separate ways.
It only made my decision to leave university that much easier. I didn't see the point in pursuing an education while I still had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. Getting a full time job seemed like the next best option to another year at uni, and would keep me busy without the added pressure of passing a course to get me into a career I wasn’t even sure I wanted anymore. Sitting here now, I’m not sure if I feel different but it made sense to me at the time. Since my Grandmother’s funeral I had thought about life in general and then what I wanted to do with mine and struggled to come up with anything. I was afraid of everything but tried as much as I could to be strong like she had said I should.
I tried to take heed of what my Grandmother had said. I knew I had too much baggage to inflict on someone like Liam. He deserved someone whole - not damaged and indecisive. I never did confess to him how much I think I came to care for him. Well until now but I’m not sure a diary confession exactly counts.
I knew that if I was ever going to deserve a good life with a career and someone in my life then I would have to fix what was wrong with me.
Surprisingly it took less effort to convince my Mother that leaving my degree early was a good idea, than it did to talk around Kara and the rest of my little group. I had sent them a group email explaining that I was taking a year out, and for the next few days my inbox kept pinging with responses of everything from ‘What the hell are you thinking?’ to ‘Who am I going to copy from?’.
My Mother, on the other hand, asked me if I thought it was the right thing for me and when I said it was right now then she just hugged me. She agreed I could live at home as long as I got a job so I and thought about my future over the summer. The job part I had already decided on myself since I was too old for pocket money. Even a social recluse needs some funds, so that was an easy promise; the other thing I’d have to work on.
So I made the decision to leave university at least for the time being. Since my position in the bookshop had long been filled I had to look elsewhere. Now I was living at home again and didn’t have classes to go to, I also needed an excuse to get out from those four walls now and then.
It was the nights that were the worst, when I sat alone in my room, in the still of night, trying to muffle the sound of my sobs. I would wake from whatever plagued my dreams that particular night and I knew I couldn’t sit in the house every night. So the sensible option at the time seemed to be applying for bar jobs.
With zero experience, and little confidence, I didn’t have much to offer but I had become very good at putting on an act. So I bluffed my way through interview after interview until one place called me back. It was an offer of part-time work, which may build up to full-time once they had sussed me out i.e. checked I wasn’t a complete idiot with a lack of patience for drunk people.
It was an old pub that had been taken over so many times that it had been nicknamed 'The Gin Bar', since the original gin cocktail menu had been adopted and added to by every new owner and manager over the years. The place kept busy serving food during the day and holding up the ‘worse for wears’ at night. It most definitely wasn't the kind of bar any of my ex's would be seen in and was far enough out of town that I didn’t have to worry they might stop in.
My first shift was a Tuesday evening to ease me in before I was really tested on the busy weekend. The guy who would be my manager told me over the phone that the uniform was black, smart/casual, which meant my oversized blouses and leggings were pulled from my wardrobe once more. I slipped my flat, lace up boots on over my leggings and added a clip to my hair to at least give the impression I'd made an effort for my new job.
The first person I saw when I walked in was the same manager I had spoken to on the phone and who had interviewed me a few days prior. He was a tall, broad man in his fifties called Joe and I liked his friendly but take no bullshit manner. Now he was standing at the end of the bar with a cloth over his shoulder talking to one of the customers who was laughing at whatever he had just said.
Joe put me to work loading and unloading the ‘fancy, newfangled’ dishwasher (his words) and showed me the drinks menus and the first hour went in quickly. A guy called Ali would be in soon and he would show me the ropes.
Walking in to the bar, I noticed him immediately as did everyone he walked past as they gestured a wave at him and he returned their smiles. Ali was one of the most beautiful guys I had ever seen. He had a nice smile but it was his eyes that caught me – they were like liquid chocolate that reflected gold in the light and sat deep in his face against his dark olive skin. His hair was a mess of dark curls and he wore it pulled back off his face with a black tie.
"Seriously?" said Alex out loud to himself. He already disliked this guy - not as much as Chris obviously but this time jealously was rearing its head. This little notebook was causing into a major dent in his self-esteem, so far this was the fifth guy who had been in her thoughts. She hadn't slept with most of them which made him feel a little better but they had sat beside her, held her hand, looked in her eyes, and she had cared for them all.
He reminded himself some of them had also hurt her or let her down. None of them had really known her the way he had gotten to know her like he did, or at least how he thought he did. It was difficult to read about the physical abuse, the emotional bullying, her feelings of worthlessness and even her Father walking out which he knew had more of an impact than she had mentioned yet. Even so, for all the struggle it was to see the train wreck that was her life so far, selfishly he knew it would be cut him deeper to turn the pages and read that she had loved someone else besides him.