kingandy | RIP Vicky Hyde

Last night my maternal Grandmother shuffled off this mortal coil.

She'd been going downhill for a while, suffering from a series of degenerative ailments - which I use in an entirely non-medical way, it sounds like it might mean something technical but really I just mean she was getting old, degenerating. Bits of her were stopping working, like her hands and legs; she had a shaky hand for years, then she had difficulty with long walks and in the last year or so she started using a wheelchair for trips out of the house. (I think maybe she had Parkinson's, but I'm not sure.) Then of course there was the cancer thing, and after that her brain never really got it back together. We all knew it was coming, but I don't think any of us were really ready. The whole thing had a sort of lumbering inevitability about it, which I suppose is the point, really.

It's kind of nice, kind of terrible, that she died on their wedding anniversary. They had sixty-two years together. To the day. And all her children were there when the call came. On reflection, there are many worse ways that it could have happened.

Somehow that makes it more heartbreaking.

Just had to go through this post changing all the tenses from present perfect continuous ("She has had") into past perfect ("She had"). Ouch.

UPDATE: Funeral is next Monday. Grandad apparently prefers funerals to be small, discreet, somber affairs, but he will have a job on his hands if he wants to stop the entire Hyde clan turning up en masse.