My Grandma Firefly

Countless hysterical moments, as you were always falling.
The start of the end, if only we'd known it was heaven calling.
I remember when we took you to the docs.
Half-term. We built towers of coloured building blocks.
And then we learnt your own scaffolding was weakening,
bringing your body down, stopping you from speaking.
I was only 11 when I rang that helpline
and ordered a leaflet to read about your decline
I was only 11 when I had to translate
your indecipherable words. And watch and wait.

Then those treasured saturdays...you, me and mum,
emptying cupboards, sorting out clothes, preperations had begun.
I read to you from girly magazines and curled your hair,
whilst you would sit, enthroned, in my late grandad's chair.
A biology lesson. I watched you loose every measly muscle.
Each day you fought for life or death, a never-ending tussel.
A living ventriloquist Doll, how ironic as that was your name,
Transmission to a silent, sunken skeleton, that you slowly became.
You couldn't even hold your head up high,
a kneck brace worn to save your dying pride.

That mothers day you sat absently and we prayed to God to set you free.
The first time I knew what suffering was,
when I helped you relieve yourself, all dignity lost.
But in that time I got to know you well,
although you couldn't speak I saw beneath your shell.
And for the first time I was old enough to greive.
Although it now seems clear that you were no longer here to leave.
I was only 13 when I wore that black dress.
And I saw them replace your kneck brace with an ivory headrest.
I was only 13 when I saw how the others cried,
in guilt for being too scared to sit by your side.

And whilst your body died you were reborn,
He was changing you, chosen to be an angel of the dawn.
That summers day I sat and read to you at your grave
and cried as I told you all my woes.
Your hand on my shoulder, you whispered to me to be brave,
and I knew you were watching over us all below.
I was only 15 when I realised that you were an angel of the sky.
A memory I will never loose, my grandma firefly.
At 24 I realised how stong and brave you had to be,
and the enormity of the role model that I was graced to see.