Grandma

I remember the night my Grandmother died. She was 87 and suffered badly from Alzheimers. Often she would believe it was 1925, and we were her brothers and sisters. It was quite distressing from time to time.

Anyway, I got a call from my Aunt, who had come home and found her dead. So, I went and waited for a bus, feeling sad, but also happy that she had been released from her torment, and that she would be reunited with my grandfather again, who'd died 17 years before. I got to her house, and let myself in with the key. They lived in a maisonette, on the upper level, the door opens onto the stairs.

Except on this occasion, it wouldn't open. Being January, and late at night, and the landing light being switched off, I couldn't see a thing. So I kept trying to open the door. Whap-whap-whap-whap. Finally, I called up. The landing light comes on, and I see a paramedic at the top of the stairs.

Can you guess who's at the bottom of the stairs? Yup. Grandmother. "Oh, mind out!" the paramedic called out, "Your Grandmother is at the bottom of the stairs."

Fucking hell, I thought, a little heads up would've been nice.

So now I have to squeeze through a tiny gap, and step over the lifeless body of Grandmother.

Why hadn't they moved her? "Well, we have to wait for the doctor to officially pronounce her dead before we can move the body."

A doctor? Fuck me, you don't need to have studied for seven years at medical school to tell that the old lady who's been lying at the bottom of the stairs for the past 5 hours is dead. What did they think she was doing, playing hide and seek? A fucking child could make that diagnosis.

Poor thing.