The day Nan died I took down all the photos I have of me and her in my room. I figured I would find photos too painful to look at and it would be best to just take them away so I wasn’t constantly reminded. To start with this really helped but since I first went into Nans house I have felt that looking at photos and videos is actually a massive comfort. There is just one point about it, I can only look at the photos and videos from a couple of years ago, anything more recent not so much. It hit me, I had grieved for the Nan a few years ago already.
Even Nan with dementia was completely different to the Nan that I sat with on that Sunday morning. It is easy to miss the changes when you see her day in day out because she slowly slipped away from us. I shared a video with friends today from 3 years ago of her dancing to the song that we had play at the end of her funeral. It doesn’t make me upset, it makes me laugh and smile. I lost that Nan quite a while ago, I had accepted I was never going to see her up dancing again. Its not to say that I didn’t try and we definitely got some arm movement dances but nothing quite like she had been. Whilst it made me sad that I wouldn’t see it again I wasn’t really sad for myself, I was gutted for Nan to lose that part of her.
I find looking at the stuff from years ago a comfort because it was the best times, we had so many laughs. If I am honest in the 12 to 18 months it all became really hard. The last month was the hardest of them all. I had a lot of stress with new needs Nan had and making sure anyone else involved with Nan was meeting these needs. (I won’t get too much into this (yet!)). I was assisting Nan with a lot of her eating and drinking. This isn’t a sympathy post, if you ask my friends I only ever saw it as the thing that I needed to do. It didn’t bother me because I knew I was ensuring Nan was being most looked after but in the last week of her life it was near on impossible to get her to eat a lot or drink a lot and I must admit I would get frustrated on my drive home.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing because sat here tonight I think I should have really saw what was coming because of that last week but I could never have guessed what was going on so I think I do need to learn to be kinder in my thoughts.
I think that looking back at all the happier times helps me remember that we did good, I did good. Whether it was playing music for her 3 years ago and her dancing or helping her eat 3 weeks ago every single day was about making sure she just had the best and I think that in time to come I will be able to look at every single photo and video with a smile on my face – even the videos where Nan is shouting at me! (There is a few!)
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