AYA: 19 December 2017

Today I woke to the message from my mother letting me know that my gran had decided to walk from her old age home to our house. Not a message I had ever expected nor had I ever wanted to get. This for a multitude of reasons is a shock, to say the least.

She is 80 years old. We celebrated her 80th on the 1st of December 2017.
It is a 3.5Km walk. That is not a short distance for an elderly lady who struggles to walk around the shop unassisted. She made the walk (she swears she walked the entire way) without her walker
She has Alzheimer’s disease. Her memory is really bad, so the fact she knew the way to our house is pretty impressive since she can not tell you our address, nor tell you hers.

She had decided my mom needed to look at some paperwork and that she would walk to our house. I was so relieved to find out that shortly after leaving the old age home, a pair of wonderful ladies picked her up and dropped her off at our house which she had somehow miraculously directed them to. If they had not done so I am not sure what would have happened to my gran as she has thrown away her cell phone (in frustration) so she can not phone anyone, her legs are not the greatest and her knees have given out on her before. Plus I am so grateful that the two ladies were decent and kind and not bad people. The worries this has now caused has left us really concerned and stressed.

On the upside, we got her Christmas shopping done today and tonight is my final night house sitting for the year. I am looking forward to not having a deadline to be at a home and finally get cracking on all I have planned for my holiday. I also managed to complete all my wrapping and shopping for this Christmas. Which is unusual as on most Christmas eve’s you can find me panicking to get the wrapping done before heading off to a dinner. I really stress about wrapping the gifts but this year I took a deep breath and just got on with it and pretended not to see any skew or minor jagged lines.