The day my nanny asked me to take her home

My nanny was my mum’s mum; her friends knew her as Nan. She had late stage Parkinson’s disease, and on finishing my PhD my mum asked me to come home and take care of her as she approached the end of her life. Nanny had been unwell for years and after a serious fall was in hospital. This is a story about the day I went to visit her and she asked me to take her home.

I headed to the small village where my nanny lived, the place she had spent most of her life and had raised her family. In that time she had raised three children, one of which was my mum. Sadly, she had lost her husband some years before and never remarried, but she had lived a vibrant life as a nurse. I arrived at the hospital where she was staying having broken her arm. The building was stark and unwelcoming, the walls and rooms were cold and clinical, everything was white and there was a strong antiseptic smell pervading the air. I walked into the TV room and saw my nanny sitting there all still and silent. Even though she had Parkinson’s and her body was failing her, her mind was sharper than ever; but she was surrounded by people mostly with dementia and I could see her becoming more introverted as she had very few people to chat and share her stories with.

Her face lit up as she saw me approach her, we had developed a strong bond during the time when I had cared for her for a few months and visited her every day in hospital. During my visits, we regularly went for strolls through the village so long as the weather was being kind. On that day I helped her into her wheelchair, it was cold outside so I wrapped a blanket around her and we made our way out of the white clinical box.

We went through the village, as we always did, window shopping in her favourite shops and stopping at the village community centre where she enjoyed having a cup of tea and a cake. So many people knew her and would stop to see how she was and say how great she looked. On the way out I was just about to take her back to the hospital when she asked me something she hadn’t asked before, she said “Rachael, can you take me home?”, I started towards the hospital and she stopped me and said, “no, I mean my home”.

Bemused by her request, but assuming she just wanted to pick something up, I started walking the familiar road towards her house. I had been down this route hundreds of times through my life, and as I walked there I thought how strange it must be for Nanny to be living in the same village she had lived in for years, yet not be living in her home. We got to the house, and I opened the front door then took her arm to gently guide her inside. She felt so small and frail beside me, holding onto her tiny arms and feeling her paper like skin underneath my hands. We moved slowly down the hall and into the living room, the house was dark and cold, and while she hadn’t stayed there for a while I was hit by how familiar it was, the smell, the carpets, the furniture, and all the little ornaments I used to amuse myself with, for hours on end as a child.

I sat her down in her favourite chair and then I sat down on the sofa. I wasn’t quite sure what to say. I felt uncomfortable and wasn’t sure what she wanted to do here but I didn’t feel like I should say anything. So I didn’t. I did think to myself though ‘why were we here?’ ‘what did she want?’ We sat for I don’t know how long, the silence was thick and deafening, resting heavily in the air. It felt full of emotion and thoughts. For years I had known Nanny had had tremors caused by her Parkinson’s and yet right then, right there as we sat together in silence, she seemed to be more calm.

Time passed, the room got darker as the sun started to go down, until eventually she whispered, “ok, I think we can go now”.

Shortly after this day of ‘sitting in silence’ my Nanny moved in with my mum; she had always been adamant she would never do that as she didn’t want to be a burden – that was the kind of lady she was. But within weeks of moving in with my mum, Nanny passed away. Looking back to that day, it seems so clear now that she knew the end of her life was coming, and she wanted to say goodbye; goodbye to the town she knew so well and where everyone knew her, and goodbye to the home she had known for so long and experienced so much in.

I had always seen her as my nanny, stuck in time as an older woman who I adored, who told hilarious jokes and who had a wicked sense of humour, who was strong and proud and made me feel safe. In those silent moments sitting in her home, I suddenly recognised the life she had experienced for so long before I arrived, and the life that must have filled that house with sound and vibrancy as my mum, aunty and uncle ran around as children and in nanny’s life before they were born. I suddenly recognised the life that lives inside a person’s home, and the meaning that brings to everything we do.

On that day my nanny had somehow recognised that her life was coming to a close, and she wanted to say goodbye.