Move along, nothing to see here.
Like several others, I went to see my grandmother when she was laid out in the funeral parlour to say my last goodbyes. I was always favoured, being the youngest and she & I had a close bond. For a couple of years before she died, she'd been (don't know a nice term for it) fucking mental. She'd had a stroke that made her unable to look after herself and, oddly, lost nearly all of her inhibitions as well as her sanity. It was distressing to he young teen that I was at the time. I visited her at the nursing home regularly, but there was no attachment any nore. The person she had been was pretty much gone, replaced by a confused and senile old lady that I only knew by sight. It seemed that my Gran was already gone.

In the funeral parlour, I looked at her face but it wasn't her. The last remnants of my Gran had left the body that they'd been attached to until death. I kissed her forehead more from repetitive habit than any actual desire. It was colder than I expected. I suppose she'd been kept in a fridge.

I was actually glad that she died. She'd suffered a lot toward the end (sorry, no details) and it became somehow easier to remember her as the person she'd been when I was a little boy, as opposed to the generic geriatric she'd become.
(Greencloud Wanted to go fishing on, Thu 28 Feb 2008, 14:09, Reply)