Nanny part 2

We used to ring my nanny when we hit the bridge in Waterford for her to put on the kettle. Nowadays, there’s no point as she would forget as soon as she hung up the phone, if she didn’t try to answer the phone with the TV remote that is. It’s better for us to just arrive and see the surprise in her face as she opens her eyes from forty winks. Most of the time she forgets when we are coming so she gets all flustered and says she has nothing in for the dinner. We reassure her but no amount of reassurance makes her settle.

We usually go down every second Thursday to Monday. My mam and me roll up, the car full of distraction techniques for me and shoes for my mother. We used to bring copious amounts of stuff with us just to bring them home and then bring them down again.

I decided last year to have a set of toiletries permanently in my nanny’s and a blanket to soothe me when I wake up from a nightmare and a squish mallow for comfort. I always make sure that the fold up table is in my bedroom and I carry a wine padded, highbacked kitchen chair up as well. I make the room I sleep in when I go down my own and my nanny, although doesn’t know exactly what I’m doing, encourages it.

When I’m there, I’m there 150%, and even though she is the woman I remember physically, her faculties have diminished. It’s horrible to see the woman you used to be as thick as thieves with gone. I still try to have the crack with her by watching tipping point and the chase. She listens along to them but can’t comprehend when eleven counters drop including the double in tipping point that it means the contestant has just won £1100 putting them firmly in the lead.

‘Does that mean he’s winning?’ she asks.

‘It surely does!’ I answer with enthusiasm.

When I’m not down in Waterford and know it’s one aunt in particulars day for ‘nanny duty’, I facetime her and she doesn’t realise it’s me she’s talking to sometimes. On other occasions she breaks my heart by telling me that she misses me and that the place isn’t the same without me. I just keep telling her that I’ll be down soon.

Because I go down with my mother and we act as a tag team so neither of us is driven demented by the poor woman, it’s nice when she goes out to the pub with my aunts and uncles leaving me at home with nanny. My mother needs that headspace for her own mental health just as I need to be alone in the bedroom doing my distraction techniques. When she is out at the pub, my nanny and me would have deep conversations just like we used to when I was younger. The only thing different to when I was younger is that halfway through a sentence, she would lose her footing and disappear.

As any woman of 93 would be she is frail and unsteady on her feet. She has been in A&E twice in as many weeks.

The first time she went to A&E it was because she swallowed two of her hearing aid batteries thinking they were her tablets. Thankfully the trip cleared her from all things battery related but showed up that her heart wasn’t doing too well. I think it’s because her heart was always two sizes too big and now it’s just normal sized and is finding it hard to cope with that. They wanted to keep her in to do more tests but she was becoming agitated and distressed so it was more of a kindness to take her home and do all the cardiology appointments as an outpatient.

One of the aunts had me researching stair lifts and transit wheelchairs as I am the one who is most organised and have the most time on my hands to be able to facilitate the request. I must have gotten in touch with twelve stairlift people and the best transit wheelchair I could find was in Argos and was new. They just aren’t to be had second hand. It didn’t cost the earth and when she fell, ending up in A&E for the second time it proved its price.

There was a man putting in a new electricity meter and Karen, the woman who comes in at lunch time, stayed with her while he was there as the electricity was off and he was a strange man outside her house. She didn’t want her to get a fright, especially when judge Judy wasn’t to be had.

After Karen set her up with her TV and made sure she had her legs up in her electronic recliner she felt it safe to leave. Nanny got it in her head that me and mom were coming down that day and that there were no sausages in the fridge for her to cook for us.

My uncle who lives six doors up was nanny’s first port of call as the keys to the car are thankfully hidden. She would never get rid of the car but hasn’t driven it in about five years. It’s more of a physical reminder that she still has her independence. Noddy, the car, has been in everyone’s possession over the years as cars have needed to go to the garage and those people then borrowed it. To them it’s been a godsend but she gets antsy when it isn’t in the driveway.

She began to walk up to my uncles house, the front door left open, and as she was walking the neighbours were watching, both a blessing and a curse of living in a small town. Unfortunately there was no one there to answer the door so she made her way back to her own house. The neighbouring busy bodies saw her one minute and the next she was gone. She fell hard onto the footpath. The two angels of mercy who were watching from different houses, and were no spring chickens themselves, lifted her up and almost carried her home. They knew to ring the aunts who came running and brought her straight into A&E.

The wheelchair got its first airing that day and it was a godsend. The aunts were worried how they were going to introduce it to her but she was in so much pain that she didn’t care what she sat in. A broken cheekbone and sprained wrist later, she was home again.

My heart went out to the woman when I heard the following day of her adventure. The woman who came with us to France would never have fallen over her own feet and wouldn’t have gotten as distressed over having sausages in for us that she would leave the house.

I guess I ask myself, what’s next? What is she going to do next week? We won’t be down for a few weeks and it kills me that the woman physically hurt herself trying to buy in the sausages she always cooked for us upon our arrival. It’s something she hasn’t done in a long time.

When I think of her my mind goes straight to the sausages and the fact that I was privileged enough to receive one every morning she did B&B. They were a staple of the goodbye breakfast and the hello lunch. Now, whenever I so much as smell a sausage I see her there, an old woman with youthful features, her pinny on, and sausages on the pan.