Christmas day, anyone who knows me knows I HATE it. Not for all the reasons you think, I don't particularly think it's commercial, sad, 'too religious' or what all the people who usually rant about christmas complain about, I hate it simply, and I'm not afraid to admit this; because Im very, very jealous. Of all of you who actually have christmas.
Since I was 5 (and before that I can't remember) my christmas day has been spent at my parent's hotel, I serve tea, smile at people I either don't know or 'know' as much in the way you can know people who pay to talk to you and feel awkward around as they tell me Im looking more and more like my mother every year , (thanks guys but she's pushing 50 and you have no idea what she looked like when she was young...) and as I've grown older I've either worked in the dining room as a waitress, or, as this year, done 'reception' aka hung around feeling bored, useless, and like I'm waisting my time and their money.
Usually, as I've hit my late teens and 20 (bleurgh) I've managed to avoid most of this fun by working as an unqualified 'Barista' at Thornton's, but this year they didn't want me back, something about the Bournemouth store closing and them having to take on all the staff. It's ok guys I get the message. Not. wanted. (In a very bitchy way, probably because I remind you of the fact that I'm taking my life places and they're not.) which pisses me off because I'm good at my (old) job, and they know I am, on a personal level I also miss the friends I made there and the mindless monotony of making endless coffee for endless people was at least a task I could literally do if my brain fell out. I also don't like to feel I'm sponging off my parents.
However even if I worked at Thornton's I still have to go in for Christmas day, I'd usually (not joking) do some work, be it uni or A level's or sit and read/be on Facebook reading everyone else's cheerful updates.
This year I've been in for 4 days solid (2 unscheduled and unpaid) and I have another two to go before I get three days rest then back on for 4/5 days.
I really love my family, and I particularly like spending so much time with my Dad, but at work my mum get's very stressed over the smallest things and doesn't seem to be able to see the whole of any problem, so interferes and makes things twice as bad. I really do love her very much but I do not like working with her.
Today was definitely the worst christmas day we/I've ever, and hopefully will ever have; I don't know how to talk about these things so I'll just be chronological.
After being woken up at 7 for 'Santa' presents (which i was given at 9pm last night) by G I was chided into dressing up and getting to work for 9.
I said goodbye to Gran on the way out, from a distance, I wish I'd gone in and spoken to her. But I knew she was asleep and didn't want to wake her.
At work I was milling around and trying to amuse my little brother when Mum got a phonecall from my uncle C, who has been staying with us to help out with Gran (mum's brother,) saying she'd died.
We knew she was ill, liver cancer from her alcoholic stage after her second husband died, but until the call we had no idea how close the end was.
Ever since I've come home we'd had carers coming twice a day to help Gran with things like undressing and showering, but considering the state I saw her in, in the hospital just over a month ago, she seemed a hundred times better, tired and weak, but not confused and actually able to hold a conversation. However on Christmas eve she was in agony, where her liver was giving out I assume, and the district nurse was called to put in a Morphine drip... never a good sign, but I figured that the doctor would come and give her a pill or drain her stomach, like before, and she would continue getting better.
Listening to her literally groaning in pain yesterday and not being able to do anything, even just talking to her, because the morphine meant she wasn't actually awake, was honestly one of the most harrowing experiences of my life, and I'm not being melodramatic when I say I have unfortunately seen some horrible things.
Today I have cried, a lot for me, but maybe not enough, I don't know why but at times like this I go numb and practical then later will take it out in some ridiculous situation. It's unhelpful and annoying but that seems to be my coping strategy. I don't want to 'cope' I don't want to carry on with normal life, I want to sleep for as many days and nights as it takes for things to feel better. But I will carry on, If only for my Mum, who is, understandably, fairly inconsolable. She needs the help an 'adult' child should give, will give, (when all I want to do is take to my bed like a child.)
On the (dubiously) "positive" side, she was at home, we've all been here, and she know's we love her. Still...
A friend of Mum's came and certified the death, as on Christmas day you can literally get anyone, and then we said goodbye as she was put into a funeral van and taken away. When we first came home, I gave her a kiss, and she was warm, looking like she was sleeping, but barely two hours later, when we said our last goodbyes, she was yellow and cold with blue lips. It was the first 'real' dead body my brother, sister and I have ever seen.
We/I have no idea what to do and are rattling around the house in silent misery, trying to drink so much tea I have no room for the sick sensation that grabs whenever I think about it.
So...today has been awful, we have lost a loving Grandmother and a great friend, I cannot begin to imagine how my mum feels. What to do now... I have no idea.
RIP Gran, We love you. Merry Christmas.
