ok, long long long week.

I’m in Atherton. My nana passed away on Saturday, the 25th of October, 2003, Bless her Soul.

I’ve been here ever since. Mum came up on the Wednesday, we went to see her in hospital in Cairns, and she went back to Atherton, mum came up here that afternoon, and I followed on the Thursday. She suffered an extension of her stroke on the Thursday night, fell into a coma for the Friday, and on Saturday moning she took her last breaths at 10.30am. Mum’s brother’s all claimed that they either ‘couldn’t handle it’ or ‘couldn’t get out of work’ to make the funeral arrangements, so mum and I have been (and still are) doing all of that. This is the first time that I’ve been part of this process. The other thing is that mum had to take care of grandad’s placement in his high-care nursing home, and do a lot of legal fiddling, so that’s taken most of her time, so a lot of the funeral stuff has been left to me.

It’s been decided that her grandchildren will be pall-bearers, and that includes me. Also, my sister is flying out to NZ this week, and won’t be able to make it to the funeral, so she’s written a letter to nana that she wants me to read aloud to her at the private viewing. I read the letter yesterday, and I burst into tears, so I’m not sure how I’ll go with reading it aloud to nana.

I’m just exhausted. There’s so much more that’s going on, but my head is so .. uh.. the words “auto-pilot” come to mind. I know what I have to do, and I’m trying to make sure it all gets done in time, and I’ll deal with the rest of it later.

Rest in Peace, Nana. I’ll love you forever.