My grandma was two months short of her ninety-seventh birthday, when she took her final breath yesterday. The dementia had seen her deteriorate over the last half dozen years – slowly at first, but then quite rapidly towards the end – so she hasn’t been the woman I loved for a long time. That person had already moved on, and I have had to make my peace with that.

Still, it’s difficult for me to let go of someone I have known my whole life, no matter how diminished she was when that final curtain was drawn, and no matter how much I wanted it to be over for her. I have wished for her to pass on peacefully in her sleep many times. Is that a little selfish? Sure. I own that. But that pain; that emptiness; that confusion. Those moments when there was just nothing behind her eyes, which were all too frequent in the last few months. She didn’t deserve that – few people do.

On Friday I had been advised that she likely only had a few days left, so I went to visit her yesterday afternoon with the intention of saying goodbye. She was asleep – the doctors had given her a drug to calm her down – and she didn’t look much like the grandma I had seen even just a couple of weeks earlier. She was thin, gaunt, and curled up in the foetal position, and she never acknowledged my presence, but I sat there and I cried for all the good years and the good times we had had just the same.

As I left her side an hour later, after kissing her on the forehead one final time, I knew I would never see her again and that I was just waiting for that phone call. I didn’t expect it quite so soon, but just five hours later she was gone.

But my grandma’s death isn’t about letting her go, or putting her in the rear view mirror. It’s more about making sure I remember the person she was, when she was vibrant and full of life, and about treating those times with the respect they deserve. What she became in the last six years is not that person, and I won’t be remembering her that way. Dementia may have taken my grandma from me, but it won’t rob me of my memories.

I miss you grandma. Always.

Our two kittens, Tess and Frankie, are a couple of weeks shy of their first birthday. I’m still reluctant to leave them to their own devices when they’re outside, but I’m learning to live with it.

Yesterday I came home from work, sat down to a spot of writing, and let the girls out into the back garden for a while. Not long after, I turned around to see Tess had snagged the wing of a pigeon and – despite my attempts to stop her – was dragging it inside.

She let it go in the utility room, where it made an attempt to escape through the kitchen window… except it was closed, so it proceeded to smack itself against the glass while Tess tried to finish off the job she had started.

After I got the window open the pigeon squeezed out and dragged itself to (relative) safety, and I spent the next hour cleaning up blood, feathers, and DNA from all the surfaces.

So much for my writing!

I have worked for the last ten months, during the pandemic – and for that I am grateful – but yesterday was my last day. Tomorrow I begin a new job, one that is more in line with what I am looking for. The hours are better, and there are absolutely no weekend shifts… and for that I am even more grateful.

When all is said and done the money is probably going to work out to be less than I have been getting, but after weighing it all up I quickly came to the conclusion that it’s not always about the money. In fact, it’s rarely about the money. As long as everything is covered with a little left over, the rest is gravy.

What it’s really about is getting home at a reasonable time, and being able to spend my evenings with The Fiancée© – something that has been missing for quite some time. It’s also a blessing to have our weekends together so we can make plans to, well… do whatever we want!

It’s easy to lose some of the magic from a relationship when you’re not there to see the trick, so don’t let money lead you in the wrong direction.

Sage advice from me to you.

Unexpectedly, I spent last evening – the day after my birthday – in the Accident & Emergency Department at hospital. A few hours earlier I had closed the side door of my van at work with my right hand, and forgotten to move my left one out of the way. For a split second I feared the worst.

Fortunately, when I opened the door my fingers were still intact, although the pain I could feel and the amount of blood coming from my hand suggested I was in a bad way. I didn’t have anything in the van to stem the bleeding so I went to the nearest house and was given a towel… which did the trick, until I was able to bandage my fingers properly.

Some painkillers, super-glue, and a couple of x-rays later and – thankfully – there doesn’t seem to be any lasting damage. My ring finger and middle finger of my left hand are bandaged, and there’s a measure of swelling and bruising, but after some rest I should be back to normal in no time.

Oh yeah, and maybe I’ll move my hand next time.

The Fiancée© will be celebrating her birthday tomorrow, and it’s the second year in a row that she has had to placate loved ones about an operation. Last year, I had my polypectomy the day after her birthday, and this year – today, as I write this – both our kittens are at the vet getting spayed.

As I’ve said before, this is my first time with cats, and it’s also the first time I’ve been aware of the sterilisation of a pet. It was quite a heartbreaking journey to the scalpel this morning, as both Tess and Frankie cried almost the whole way there.

Not to make it about me, but it was quite upsetting to know that they were frightened and confused, and that I was the reason this was happening. They hadn’t asked for it. At least once I wanted to turn around and take them home, but I know this is for the best, and that they will recover quickly.

I hope that this operation won’t change them in any fundamental way, and that their personalities will remain intact. I want Tess to continue to be the inquisitive troublemaker, who loves to sit in boxes and purrs like a Harley Davidson; and Frankie needs to still be the cautious one who takes her sister’s lead, and always looks like she’s trying to do long division in her head.