Chapter 2: Rewind

It felt like Déjà vu. I couldn’t explain it. Almost the exact same thing had happened a few weeks ago, and I had been doing the exact same thing. I was rocking on the steel wire chair, while searching for images for my art coursework, at the same time as sending messages to some of my friends and trying to get in touch with one of my closest best friends, Zarah. Not online? Oh well..

I logged out. And as I carried on searching for those art pictures, suddenly my mum glided up the stairs, that same grave face she wore whenever she told anyone any bad news. My dad was working at the computer next to me and had just finished calling friends and relatives to tell them that my Nan was in a bad way, while I worked on his Apple.

“Daddy..” My mum gasped (she called my dad that since I was born, to encourage me to call him that instead of his first name. A bit embarrassing, really, but at this moment I didn’t care anymore). My dad turned, and so did I. When I saw her face, I thought she was going to say, ‘your mum’s getting worse. I think she should go to the hospital.’ No, that wasn’t it. I didn’t realize it at the time, but from seeing her face over and over as all my memories haunted me, I should have guessed what she was about to say. It was much worse than that. Any sane person would realize that if they saw her expression, and heard her tone. I guess I’m just not sane, then.

“Daddy, I think your mum died!” She cried softly, as her voice broke. It must have been hard for her to tell him this, his own mum had just passed away probably about a minute ago, and she had no choice but to tell him. If I had to do that, I probably would have screeched for my parents repeatedly trying to find my Nan’s pulse. I’m glad it wasn’t me that saw her like that first; I really don’t know what I would have done, or how I would have reacted, and I never want to have to go through that. Ever.

My heart sank. So deeply, no existing words could describe how I felt. Spikes appeared inside me somehow when she said those words, no matter how calming her voice was. The spikes grew, and ripped at my insides, searing through my flesh, crushing, slaughtering my heart, piercing holes everywhere slowly, making me feel the pain even more and making me bleed. Those words that I knew I would hear sometime soon, the single hurtful word that I once feared when I was little. I was too late. If I just sat with her more often today, if I just said to her everything I wanted and needed to say, everything I wanted her to know before she was gone, maybe I would have felt a bit better. I was so dense; I didn’t even realize it at the time. Why am I so darn stupid?

I knew this was going to happen one day. I was just glad that it didn’t happen in the summer when I was in Malaysia, or when I was at school or something. At least I was there-not in her room, holding her hand as she left this world, I’ll admit, but still there. The day before, it Was Eid, and because of that, all the Muslim pupils at my school were permitted to have two days of authorized absence, for which I had intended to simply take one day off, but ended up taking two because I was too tired to even wake up, everyone was. I think my not going to school that day was a good thing-yes, I did miss a bit of valuable education, but if I did go, I wouldn’t have been able to see or speak to my grandmother before she died.

I ran down the stairs with them; and suddenly the whole house felt cold, which I had not felt before. Part of me really didn’t want to go into her room; not when I knew what I would see. Nevertheless I went in anyway. I had to see for myself whether it was true; whether she really was gone. Not that I didn’t believe my mum, it was just a terrible shock for us all.

I entered, and once I reached the side of her bed, I finally took a glimpse of her. Her eyes and mouth were open and blank; her mouth ajar in that same wide ‘o’ shape it had been for the whole day. Her numb eyes were fixed in the spot where I was standing, but she wasn’t looking at me. Before I caught sight of her, I hoped that it was a mistake, and I would see her alive, but when I saw her face, I knew she could never come back, yet for some reason, I could still not accept nor believe that it was true. Her appearance petrified me, and as I took it all in, my breathing accelerated. “No. She’s not-,” I gasped. “Sh-she can’t be! N-no!” Tears gushed down my face, while I struggled to breathe. Suddenly I felt very weak. My mum grabbed me, and pulled me into a tight embrace. She too was holding back the tears, but much more successfully than me. “Sshh…don’t cry; she’s gone. It’s her time, Allah wants her back, and He wants her more than we do.”

That was true, it was too late, and she had to go. After all, she had been in this world for ninety two years, and had gone through so much. In her old age, she could not walk, and with her body deteriorating, she spent years being bed ridden. On top of that, she had a cyst in her brain, Alzheimer’s, and several other problems, too. And now she was free. Obviously I don’t know what it’s like to die, but I can’t help but wonder. Was she still in there, in her body after she died-when we had already gone down to see her? If that’s true, I wonder whether she could hear us, and hear me crying. Could she still see, but not move, or speak? Was her spirit in there, but her body unable to function like it used to? With that being a mystery, I needed to stop crying. If she could see me, how would she feel, would it make her feel sad about leaving, when she would hopefully be going up to a better place? I didn’t want her to feel sad.

When I saw my dad’s face as he looked at her, that made me try even harder to stop crying, at least in front of them. I could see that my tears were making him feel worse: he too was trying not to cry. He whimpered, as he checked for a pulse that was not there, and kissed her forehead.

Her eyes lacked their previous redder color, though she couldn’t have been dead for very long. Her skin was a pale, ice white, and her lips were purple, but they had been changing to that color since this morning.

Dad rushed upstairs. I guess he couldn’t hold it back any longer, and neither could I. My mum steered me away from my Nan and brought me to the front room, where she tried to calm me down again. Before she went upstairs to see whether my day was okay, she tried to call my siblings, to tell them the news. I sat beside her, reliving the emotions swerving inside me as she explained everything to my brother. My sister said she was unable to come, as she was at her mother’s house in Hastings.

“I need to go upstairs-will you be okay down here?” my mum whispered.

“Yeah” I croaked. I listened to her trudge upstairs. Soon, all I could hear was my heartbeat. Everything was too quiet without my Nan around. The pain was piercing through my body, and I felt cold all over, and that was just me, the granddaughter. I can’t imagine how much pain my parents had felt, especially my father. That made me cry even more. I tried to sit down, but that didn’t help: I wanted to be able to do something, I felt useless. I hugged my sides and paced back and forth unhurriedly, trying to make sense of it all. Well-it made sense what had happened, but I just couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know it before, but as I paced, it struck me.

A couple of hours ago, the last time I ever spoke to her, she was breathing deeply: it was still quite loud and bad, but it was better than that of her previous condition, of being unable to breathe properly, while I could hear her struggles to breathe from the front room in the morning when had finally woken up. She had begun talking again, and she even said goodbye, in her own way, at least. I held her hand, and tried to lift it, but it wouldn’t budge: her body was getting stiffer and stiffer by the hour, and the carers who cleaned her four times a day, noticed this. A sudden wave of emotion hit me at her touch, and it was then that I knew that she didn’t have much time left. I had known it all along, but when she really did go, I still couldn’t believe it. I wanted to believe that she hadn’t died, that it was just a mistake.

Back then when I held her hand, she forced a smile at me. I could see that she was struggling, but she smiled my favorite smile, the one that she hadn’t given me for a while now, the one I used to see a lot when I was much younger. “I love you Nana, I want you to remember that.” Her smile widened, and her other hand managed to lift slightly as I was about to leave the room. Wait-was that a wave? My pacing ground to a halt. Did she know that she was going to die soon, was she saying goodbye to me? After all, it had been a very long time since she had waved to anyone, and she was so serene. Normally, these past few years her sanity had been going up and down like a constantly moving seesaw. One second she would know where she was and what was going on, but the next, she could have thought that she was floating up in the air, and didn’t know who anyone was. Except in those last few hours of her life, she was back again: the real her, not the one that had regularly tried to argue with me about nothing. My mum’s theory was that she had become jealous of me, because of my youth, and my ability to move around like she wished she could. It also must have been the pain: on particularly bad days, she would shout at everyone, and she even hurt one of the carers, Esther, who was such a nice lady, and my Nan usually adored her. So it wasn’t just me, she was lashing out, but I guess I had some part in her anger, too. Whenever she lashed out, her words really hurt me. I guess if I was stronger and had enough willpower to not take her words to heart, then maybe things would have been different between us. I hate being a teenager.

She used to shout abuse at me, swear at me, call me names. Sometimes, she refused to believe who I was. I would tell her that I was her granddaughter, but she was so confused at times, that she thought I was an imposter, a thief. Once, she accused me of stealing her lemonade. It was in her mug, and she had drunk it, but in about five seconds, she had forgotten that. She called my dad, and told him that I stole it-that I sneaked up on her, and drank the lemonade from her mug, when there were perfectly good drinks in the kitchen.

My mum returned a few minutes later, while I had somehow ended up hovering beside my Nan again. She lay on a bed provided by the hospital, and the mattress was filled with air. Because of this, it gave me false hope, an illusion that she was still breathing. Hesitantly, I reached for her hand. It was so stiff, it wouldn’t move at all. I thought I felt a single beat: but I could have been mistaken. Maybe I just imagined it, maybe I just wanted so much for her to still be alive. I kept my face composed. “Nana? I-if you can hear me, I love you. I hope we’ll get to see each other again someday.” It may sound strange, talking even though I wasn’t sure whether I could be heard, but it made me feel a bit better, even though that feeling didn’t last for very long. I continued to stand beside her, and tried to say a prayer for my Nan, and recite a verse from the Quran.

“Are you feeling a bit better now?” My mum asked as she approached me.”

“Y-y-yeahh, I th-think s-so.” I sighed

“Zak’s on his way here.” she said as we walked out of the room again, and went upstairs.

Tried to go back to making my questionnaire for my science coursework, and at the same time, doing research for my applied art homework. I thought that if I kept myself a bit busy, it might keep my mind off it. It helped a little, I guess, but not much: I couldn’t think. It was like the sudden fall in temperature had affected my brain and my brain had ceased to function normally. My head and everything around me was spinning, images of the old Doris, the one from my childhood being attacked by the images of her lifeless body. I switched on the TV: Heroes was on. Normally, that one program lit up my day, but tonight it was ineffective; it did nothing to perk up my mood.

As I battled with my mind, I heard footsteps coming up timidly towards the living room where I was. Zak, who was just a bit taller than me, seemed to be very calm, and in control of his emotions, though still sad. He hugged me as I twisted round to see him, while I tried to mirror his composure. “How are you feeling?” He asked, and I shrugged slowly. “I-i-i’m o-okay, h-h-how a-about y-you?”

“I’m okay”. As he said this, I began to cry again. Argh. Why couldn’t I stop crying? My emotions were going up and down like a yo-yo. One minute I would be fine, the next, I would be crying again. I was crying like a baby, maybe even worse, but silently, at least. Such a pathetic little girl: wasn’t I supposed to grow up already? Even though I tried so hard not to cry, the tears still managed to escape. After a while though, I finally just gave up: I just let it all out.

Every so often Anitha would tell me about how annoying and horrible her brothers could be, but I could never really understand that. Unlike hers, my siblings were the opposite of hers. Instead of feeling closer to my sister like Anitha does with hers, I feel much closer to my brother, even though we’re only half related-I don’t think being half siblings affects how close we are though; I understand him more than I do Naomi.

Zak giggled when he noticed that I was still trying to get on with my schoolwork, even after what had happened. When he laughed, for some reason it wasn’t hurtful or as intimidating as it would have been if someone other than him or my parents had done that. Anyone else, and it would have hurt me-I am pretty sensitive, after all. For a few minutes we talked about our Nan, and I told him about how she was the whole day, about how she died peacefully, after saying goodbye to us all. Because she didn’t just wave and smile at me, she did that to my parents too, so it must have been her farewell to us.

My dad came up. His expression was so hard to read today, everyone’s were. I think he was trying not to be too sad about it, because she’s not suffering anymore. He began to have a lengthy conversation with his son as usual, something which I had never been able to do very well. I could write things lengthily, but even today I still find it pretty hard to have long conversations with people. I just wouldn’t know what to say to them. The subject of my dad’s conversation suddenly slipped into the subject of death, and soon enough he was telling my brother true stories, one of which was about how he found an old friend of his dead, and it turned out that the friend was secretly a drug addict, and before leaving for his honeymoon, he took some last drugs before going-but that killed him, and my dad found him lying there. When he described the stiffness of the body, and the awkwardness of how he lay on the floor, that hurt me a little. It reminded me of what I was trying so hard to forget. I tried to block out all the grief of today by inflicting a little pain in my left hand, canines sinking into my own flesh, trying to forget. Well, hardly slitting wrists, is it? I don’t think I’ll ever go that far.

Soon, we all went downstairs, my dad called the night doctor, so my Nan could be pronounced dead. That really hurt me too; the doctor checked whether she was really dead. I could see that from far, she was really gone.

Over an hour after phoning them, the funeral directors came to take to a morgue. It was so frustrating that they couldn’t find our house, when it was so easy to locate. That was really strange, because they were located somewhere in Downham, my brother and me joked that they had a Sat Nav and ended up in Tesco’s.

Seeing her taken away like that was really difficult. My heart was crushed, and I was bleeding inside; there was a rosebud in my heart, but its thorns were piercing through it. I couldn’t bear to look at her because it hurt so much, but as they took her away, I just had to-I didn’t think I’d ever see her again. However after I saw her body for the very last time, I regretted it. As they lifted her up, I realized just how stiff her body really was. Instead of lying limp like someone who was merely unconscious, her body was stone: cold and hard. They laid her flat on some sort of stretcher, and her whole body, including her arms were molded into the position it was when she lay on the bed. Her arms were twisted to her sides, clawed hands, frozen in place to how it was when she was still alive, gripping onto the sides of the bed. A cloth was placed on her, covering every part of her body, until she could not be seen. Then the men brought her into a black van, and she was gone.

As soon as I had a waft of the fresh, cold air outside and the door was shut, for the first time since it happened I realized how badly it smelled in my Nan’s room after she left earth. One short breath was all it took, and BOOM! The stench entered my lungs. It was horrible, and it planted a foul taste in my mouth. I rushed to the bathroom, throwing up a lot of sick, tears surging into the toilet. It was tough trying to get the taste out of my mouth, but eventually I managed it. I almost swallowed the mouthwash and toothpaste, the way that I forced so much of it into my mouth. I probably would have swallowed a bar of soap whole if it could make me feel well again.

At about 1pm, my brother finally left once the men had gone. My parents said that since my Nan had just died, I didn’t have to go to school the next day if I really didn’t feel up to it, but I said I wanted to go. After all that had happened, I realized how strong my Nan was, and I wanted to be just like her, in that sense. Before she died, I longed to try and work as hard as I could, so that when the day came that I would get my GCSE results, I could not only show my whole family, but especially her. From hen on, I had decided that I would try hard to never give up, and live my life to the full: for her, for my family, and for God. I’ve been given this life, yet I feel as though I am wasting it, like I’m making too many mistakes, and not learning from them as much as I should be. Seeing my Nan like that made me realize that, like I’ve been in a deep sleep, and it’s time for me to wake up.