I am made of love

I'd been struggling the last year anyway because, due to very literally one bad day (which I was unfortunately present for) my nan ended up having to go to a Assisted Living home, where she really started to deteriorate mentally very quickly. Within the space of two weeks she went from a capable woman within the early stages of dementia to not being able to recognise people, talking to people who aren't there to then not being able to form a coherent sentence or feed herself. And that was so hard, because literally up until her sudden deterioration, she was my rock, my main in-person support, my comfort person. I was seeing her at least once a week but on average about twice. I was staying with her for about 10 days of the month on average, we were going out to get lunch regularly, we were talking on the phone everyday. And I just suddenly lost all of that in the span of two weeks, and then she was just this shell of herself. And I think I kept waiting for her to come back but she didn't.

I'm thankful I didn't stop visiting her, although I'm also glad I limited my visits to her. They were very hard for me and I struggled a lot so I only visited her a handful of times but I'm glad I still went. The last time I saw her was her birthday in September, and there was a lovely moment where she almost seemed like herself, I'd brought her an egg custard tart and she looked at them and said "oh, I like those!" and honestly that was the most coherent I'd seen or heard her be in months, and I'm thankful I got that moment with her before she passed.