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‘Your lovely natural hair.’
‘I thought I could do with a change up, to be a bit less boring.’ Helen sat down in front of her on the floor like a five-year-old.
‘Rubbish! There’s nothing boring about you,’ Nanny G faltered to take a gulp of air. ‘I always said you’d look lovely even in a bin bag,’ the last words struggled out of her mouth, and her hand traced down to her side to pick up her oxygen mask.
Nanny G had been a real doer. Conditioned from decades of raising children, washing dishes by hand, and working the farm, she couldn’t sit still for a minute. But today she just couldn’t get going. Once upon a time she had been a headstrong farm girl, who would walk fifteen miles a day without thinking about it. It had taken her a long time to realise that the powerful muscles in her legs weren’t there anymore. That her already thin lips had receded into her mouth. She felt like a marionette: brightly animated one minute, then flopped forwards the next.
‘Are you feeling okay, Nan?’ Helen’s hand was on her shoulder.
‘Well, no I’m not. The truth is my girl, I’m finished.’
‘Oh Nan, don’t say things like that!’
‘It’s just the truth! It can’t be argued with. You know I liked the version of myself who could walk across the cliffs for miles, or at least be helpful to your mother. You know how much she worries! I am not wedded to the version of me who is confined to this couch. Out with the old, in with the new, that’s what I …’ Nanny G stopped to breathe deeply into the mask.
Helen felt pressure in her ears, like they were actively trying to close themselves off to hearing anymore.
‘Now don’t look so worried. I’m not afraid of dying. I’ve had a good run, very few regrets.’
Helen clambered back into the conversation, trying to ignore the feeling of having a gaping hole where her stomach should have been. ‘I think there’s already so many things about my life I’d like to change.’ Helen paused, remembering again that life actually wasn’t all about her and her petty micro-dramas. ‘Is there anything you’d do differently?’
‘Well, we all got married terribly young. We had to be a virgin, no question about it, and I think it might have been quite fun to have some different experiences, maybe some different men …’ Nanny G managed a wry smile, ‘… because that’s all you have at this age. Memories. Boxes and boxes of memories to flick through, to keep you going.’
‘Do you miss Grandpa M?’
‘That’s like asking me if I’d miss my left foot. He was just always there. Until he wasn’t.’
‘What about … was it, Vernon?’
‘Oh Vernon. I wouldn’t say I regret not seeing him again. It’s just that chapter was never closed. I suppose you learn in life that things don’t always have neat endings, but yes, I do think of him often. I wonder what his life held for him.’
‘It would be great for you to see him again,’ ventured Helen.
‘Ah well, that would be something to get out of bed for. But I suspect that I might have outlived him! I have had a nasty habit throughout my life of outliving everyone I knew. My parents, my sisters, Grandpa M.’ Nanny G glanced down at the scrunched-up tissue in her hand. ‘Yes, I suppose it is my time to go.’
Nanny G stopped trying to lift her head off the pillow, and let it flop to the side. Helen guessed this was what it was like, by the time you reached ‘the end’, you didn’t resist it. Maybe it opened out ahead of you like a gateway back to all the loved ones you had lost. Helen moved to tuck Nanny G in, and pulled the blanket up around her shoulders.
Chapter 17
‘How’s Nan?’ Henry leaned his oversized frame against the back of the fridge and popped open a can of Fanta. He’d always liked sugar.
‘Worryingly calm, I’d say, it’s like she’s accepted it’s the end.’ Helen bit hard on her lower lip. ‘I just don’t know what to do to get her to hang on.’
‘I love Nan, too, Hels, but maybe it’s just her time. I know mum will find it hard …’
‘Yep.’
‘We all will, but what can you do? We’ve made these last few years good for her I think.’
‘That makes her sound like a rescue cat, Henry.’
‘Right. Yep it does. I mean, just put yourself in Nan’s shoes though; how would you feel if all the people you’d known growing up were gone? Mum and Dad, Sophie and Elle, me and Nessy …’
‘Nessy? Getting serious huh?’ Helen managed a quick jab to Henry’s barrel-like ribs.
‘Well yes probably,’ said Henry; he was incapable of being playful. ‘But you see what I mean, she’s just got memories.’
‘She’s got us.’
