I went with Gran (maternal grandmother) to visit Nan (paternal grandmother) today. I decided to take the “quickest route” according to whereis.com. This included a couple of tolls, which was fine because we now have an E-Tag. Getting there was pretty sweet except that I missed one turn, costing us a few minutes. Getting back was awful. I think we were supposed to turn onto a road that I was quite convinced was not the name of the road we came on. We ended up going south-west instead of north. We went from Taren Point to Westleigh via St Peter’s and Botany Bay, which probably doesn’t mean anything to any of you and certainly wouldn’t have meant anything to me before today. Now it means very bad and very tiring!
The visit itself went quite well. Gran called them yesterday to make sure Nan was going to be there and she received vague information that Nan would probably get her hair done at some point but they’d tell her we were coming. When we got there we couldn’t find Nan, she was getting her hair done! We waited for a little while then I went over to the hair-dressers to see what was happening. Nan’s hair was finished and she was waiting for a nurse to come and get her. She was very surprised and happy to see me (whether they told her we were coming is a mystery, she could have forgotten). It was a good thing I went to get her, we could have waited a while.
Nan seemed nicely settled in to her room and there was a lovely chap named John that tried to help us find her. I believe they’re friends. We had a cup of tea with her in her room, we took her some flowers, Gran brought a calendar for the wall so she might know what day it was, we took Gran’s album of my wedding to look at because last time we were there she seemed to have forgotten hubby. She said she remembered that I was married and we looked through the photos. We had a look through some Christmas cards that she decorated the other day and she gave us a few to take home. It was quite a nice visit really and Nan is doing a lot better than last time we saw her. Of course she was given money for the hair-dresser and forgot about it and then got upset because she never knew how much money we had. She mentioned to the lady at reception that she didn’t have enough money and then found the $20 note in her pocket. She told us the story of her African Violet that flowers by her window about six times and asked whether we wanted tea or coffee and sugar several times. While it’s a bit sad that she doesn’t remember those things and it’s possibly signs of worse things to come, for now they’re not important, she remembers her family and her friends. 🙂
