Dementia – Saying goodbye to my Nanny whilst she was still here ❤

I had never heard the word Dementia before, Alzheimer’s I’d heard of but Dementia I hadn’t a clue about. I didn’t hear about it until my Nanny was diagnosed with it. I watched Dementia take away someone I love from me.

Nanny’s house was our safe place, it was the place we arrived in when Mammy ran away from my Father, it was the place we lived when our house went on fire and it was our second home, always. Plus she always had the best biscuits.

A lot of things that started happening with Nanny was spread across a few years and was mainly put down to the reason she was ‘getting older’. She had started to leave fifty euro notes just lying around the place, she was constantly irritated, especially when my baby cousin was playing. Once, we were all singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to someone in the family and she shushed us and told us to be quiet, she was always a bit grumpy, but now she was very grumpy and again we put it down to old age and not really caring anymore.

I was still in secondary school, so I was a teenage when it all was beginning. The day they knew something was very wrong was the day she got lost up the town. Our town is a very small town and she has walked the streets of this town thousands of times but that day she couldn’t find her way home.

They brought her to the doctor, I’m not sure of all the details here but she was diagnosed with Dementia.

Help was needed. My Mother and her sister took carer duties between them, my Mother with a full time job and my Auntie with young children. They had a nurse come everyday to give her medicine. It soon became too much, we never really seen our Mother, she would go to work in the morning and straight to my Nanny’s house afterwards for the night, we did stay occasionally but we just liked the comfort of our own beds and we just felt like we were irritating my Nanny by being there. She hated noise.

Nanny got very violent and angry throughout her time still living at home. She was escaping and going up the town and getting lost and scared because she couldn’t find her way home, people would always end up bringing her home because she was a well known part of the community. She was in danger to herself and others. My Mother was exhausted, mentally and physically.

The decision came from all of Nanny’s sons and daughters, it was time to put her in a home. They were all trying their best to get down and mind her too by the way, they were taking their days off to give Mammy and her sister days off, they were travelling a long way to be there for sometimes even just a night. Everyone was knackered.

This was no easy decision to make as to be able to afford to put her into a home, they would need to sell her house to pay for it. This broke everyone’s heart, this was everyone’s second home. I still walk by that house now years later and my heart still sinks because even though it’s there, it’s not hers, it’s not the same.

Nanny struggled with Dementia for several years before passing away in August 2015. Tough as nails she was, fighting it till the end. She experienced strokes during this time and I know she got very sick during this time.

She loved her home – she would just walk around it talking to everyone. She didn’t care when we were there because she didn’t know who we were or why we were there to see her. She had forgotten everyone.

My family found this very hard, but in the end she was a very funny person. Due to her being in home, we didn’t see a lot of the really horrible stuff, her sleepless nights, her pain or her anger. We always got to see a free woman who thought she was a teenager.

A woman who would ask my Mother to dance with her in the hallways without a care in the world. A woman who asked the same questions over and over again and my five year old cousin would say “I already told you” and Nanny wouldn’t even notice. Five years out of school and I would still answer ‘good’ when she asked ‘how was school’ for the seventh time in ten minutes.

Once, we went to visit and we sat for two minutes and she stood up and said ‘right I better be off’ time for us to go so.

We got a lot of fun out of her, she was a strict grandmother and we didn’t really have much fun with her growing up and all of sudden we were sharing laughs with her as she told us things we knew might have happened years ago that she thought happened on that same day.

Dementia took my nanny away the day she was diagnosed. She became a stranger, she didn’t know us or love us. In a way, she was gone. Instead we got this new very angry, very sick and very confused person, who we still loved but who we knew wasn’t the person we loved.

Now, I don’t know a lot of the medical things that happened to my Nanny because my Mother didn’t pass a lot of that information on because she knew it would be too much. I know it was hard and I applaud the carers, nurses, doctors and anyone who took care of my Nanny. You all are amazing people.

In my head, I knew my Nanny was gone for a long time. I got upset, but then I embraced this new woman I was getting to know, it was like I was getting to see a bit of my young Nanny before she was a wife or a mother or a grandmother, it was when she was carefree and happy. I really enjoyed that part. I’m glad we shared some good times in a hard time.

Years before I asked my Nanny was a man her boyfriend, because unfortunately I never got to meet her husband, my Pops, as he passed away a year before I was born, she smiled and said something like ‘I’ve already found the love of my life’ it blew me away.

I wasn’t there when my nanny passed away but she had a room full of my family and her friends, she would have loved the fuss. Whatever happens after death, I don’t know. But she believed in Heaven and I know she was going to find the love of her life.

Sleep tight Nanny x

Lots of love,

Belle x