Back to Cheddar today for a lightening Christmas visit. We headed over to Wells to visit my grandma Doris, who is celebrating her 100th Christmas, or at least would be if she knew it was Christmas. As I have mentioned before, old age means she no longer understands too much about where she is or who anyone is. I love her very much and she is a remarkable and inspirational woman so it's sad to see her decline, as it is that she no longer has any idea who I am. She's recovering from a fall and was very sleepy when my mum, dad, my niece and I popped in to see her and it was very hard for anyone to make a connection. I was hoping that there might just be a moment or two of clarity or that she might suddenly rememeber me, if just for a moment. And mum and dad say that sometimes she has times where she has some recall. But she isn't the woman she once was, though she remained active and with it right through her eighties.
We had some presents for her, which mainly befuddled her. Mum had a couple of snow globes to show Doris, but in her keenness to shake them she knocked them together and smashed one right over the bed. Shattered glass and snow flecked water fell on to an already confused old woman. Mum cleaned up the mess as best she could, whilst my dad quizzed Doris about her eight times table and the Morse code. Sometimes Doris remembers this stuff and dad claimed it helped show how with it the old girl was, but it added an odd layer of humour to this rather tragic tableaux and God knows where Doris thought she had woken up. Surrounded by strangers, sprinkling her with glass and asking her what eight sevens were. She blinked up at them.
Only her head was above the sheets and despite her confusion she looked well enough and she certainly didn't look like a 99 year old. She looked like herself. Like a younger version of herself. That had become a disembodied head. I was feeling sad to see her like this, but luckily my family's antics were adding a level of farce. My mum picked up a plant pot and spilled soil over the carpet and my dad knocked a book onto the floor. There were laughs to be had here, but they were dark and bleak ones.
My mum put on my grandma's favourite song, "Clair de lune" and sang along with it, hoping that grandma might sing along too. Usually she would do so, but this time she just stared at my mum with an imploring look on her face, like she wanted to sing along, but didn't know the song, or the face in front of her. Their faces were close and the mother looked into her daughter's eyes, but didn't see or hear anything she knew. My mum continued to sing. The music continued to play. It was one of the saddest things I've ever seen. The other day a journalist asked me when the last time I had cried was and I couldn't remember having wept for years. But my heart is not stone and I shed some tears today. I hid them from the others. I wondered if I would see Doris again.
I probably will. She's the toughest of birds and in the last two or three years has got through things that would have killed a woman twenty years younger. But already so much of her is lost. I still hoped I might get something from her. She caught my eye a couple of times and half-smiled, but not out of recognition. I would have loved just a fleeting moment of the old Doris popping to the surface. She's the best one out of the lot of us. But I didn't get anything. She looked at me as I said goodbye and I told her I loved her. And even though it might have meant nothing to her, it meant a lot to me to say it. I guess love might exist after all.
My mum ruefully commented that I would be hard pressed to make comedy from such a situation. Though I think that whole thing would play pretty well in a comedy drama. Did she even remember smashing a snow globe over her own mother? Comedy and tragedy are bedfellows. And the bed has a smashed snowglobe on it.
Imagine having seen a hundred Christmases. I feel pretty bewildered after 44. Happy 100th Christmas grandma.
