I Really Wanted My Grandmother to Die

And I’m no longer ashamed about it

I ought to start this by saying that I absolutely adored my grandmother. I lived with her for a good portion of my childhood and teens, and she has shaped the person I am today. She was hilarious, glamorous, the life of every party, and partial to some emotional manipulation to ensure we remembered her. She used to love telling me that when she died, I could have her jewelry, and would even go so far as to force me to pick out a piece that would remind me of her the most while I sobbed into my pajama top, beside myself with the knowledge that she would one day die. I was 11.

But when she got sick, especially toward the end, when she was really sick, when I was in my late twenties, her death couldn’t have come quickly enough for me. It’s taken me a long time to confront that reality and to understand that feeling that way wasn’t evil or heartless; in fact, it was perhaps the most compassionate response I could have had.

I don’t know why Alzheimer’s has been gifted the aphorism of “The Long Goodbye;” it really ought to be rebranded as “The Perpetual Hello.” It starts with the annoying phase: repeated sentences, forgotten or misplaced items, constantly re-explaining plans, or having to endure the fake laugh at the punch line of a joke because you can see they just haven’t understood. The annoying phase is that scary cliffhanger feeling when you know something isn’t right, but you’d like to continue pretending it’s because they weren’t listening properly or hadn’t been paying attention. That’s perhaps the time when you, the unafflicted, are the cruelest. Desperate to blame them, before you can acknowledge the truth staring you both in the face.

Then comes the hilarious phase: calling everyone by the wrong names, telling bizarre stories to the baffled waitress, sitting down in the dog’s bed at Christmas. This is the point where you, the unafflicted, are perhaps your most naïve. Okay, this is manageable, it’s not so bad, and we all seem okay. Until, of course, you understand how horribly misguided and in denial you were. Because it eventually ends in the I really want you to die, and for all this suffering to end phase.

Looking back now, the sheer mental exhaustion of trying to care for someone with Alzheimer’s seems like some sort of chaotic-good fever dream. But at the time, it was unbearably difficult to live through, and anyone who has cared for someone with such an illness will understand the near impossibility of it.

I’ll give you an example of a typical day caring for someone with a degenerative brain disease. It was a bright day nearing the chill of autumn when my mum just needed to get out of the house. She couldn’t face another day of shepherding my grandma away from the perilous stairs, or distracting her from the delusion that her parents (who were long dead) were waiting for her to return home to the farm.

My mum, I should mention, had also had a year of shit health. She’d had two partial foot amputations due to complications with diabetes, had lost her father to diabetes-related illness in the same year, and had been told that cataracts would likely take her eyesight given time. It’s no surprise really that she wasn’t feeling tip top as one of my grandmother’s primary carers, so I tried to help out as much as I could. I guess that’s why when she asked if we could all just go out in the car, I stupidly agreed.

As you can imagine, with only two half feet, my mum wasn’t the steadiest. To help address this, she had purchased the world’s heaviest mobility scooter from Facebook Marketplace. It took three (able-bodied) people to get into the boot of my car, earning it the unaffectionate nickname of the “immobility scooter.”

Also not hot on mobility was my grandmother, who would occasionally deign to be pushed along in her wheelchair. However, the wheelchair, which was generously gifted by the NHS, didn’t fold properly and had to be balanced precariously on top of the scooter.

With absolutely top-notch mobility was our rescue ex-police dog, Luna, who somehow guilt-tripped us into coming. Luna, who failed her police academy training because she wasn’t aggressive enough, had been with us for about a year at the time. Having now been Luna’s family for nearly five years, I can safely tell you that “not being aggressive enough” was the least of the police’s worries.

Having finally wrestled everyone and their spare parts into the car, we set off. Grandma was always happy in transit; I think it’s because she felt like she was going to wherever it was she needed to be. But when we arrived anywhere, she grew anxious again. Where was her husband? Were the children waiting for her at the school gates?

But this time, grandma wasn’t happy, Luna leapt from the front to the back, toppling the wheelchair and screaming with uncontained dog frustration at being in transit, for unlike grandma, Luna was anxious to get somewhere, anywhere, and absolutely delighted when she arrived.

When we finally did arrive at the park, it was a disaster. I couldn’t get my grandma to stay in the wheelchair long enough for me to heave the mobility scooter out of the boot, and when I accidentally dropped the scooter battery on my mum’s remaining sliver of foot, she let go of the dog, who promptly attacked a Cavalier King Charles.

When we finally got going, my grandma frantically told passersby, twisting round in her wheelchair, that I had killed her children. Only I laughed. Nervous. Awkward. Bordering on hysterical. The dog kept frantically trying to rip the wheels off my mum’s mobility scooter, and finally, my grandmother, having had enough of the debacle, got up, and walked off into the trees. I really couldn’t blame her.

When we finally made it back to the house, my mum, who was now beyond stressed, barked orders at me till I ran away to the loo. I remember sitting there staring at my phone, slowly disassociating, my mum still ceaselessly giving orders, when something in me just snapped.

“CAN I JUST HAVE A PISS IN PEACE?”

I could hear distant laughter from my sister as my mum ascended the stairs on all fours and told me I must resolve to sort my anger issues out.

This memory is funny to me now, but at the time, I remember feeling on the brink of madness, hopelessness, and rage.

There were better times, bittersweet ones, where something, often music, would bring my grandma back to herself, if only for a few precious minutes.

To this day, I can’t listen to “Can’t Help Falling In Love” by Elvis Presley without crying. My grandma, who always used to tell me I “belonged on the stage,” was a performer herself. She had a beautiful voice and such incredible presence. I would only have to start singing “Wise Men Say,” and she would sing the rest, remembering each word, each note, each delicate pause for breath.

Likewise, to this day I can’t listen to Edith Piaf’s “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” without smiling. Whenever I tried to sing this in an overly French way, singing each word in the back of the throat, grandma would laugh until she was breathless.

But eventually, she could no longer sing, and she could no longer laugh. She slowly forgot how to walk, how to cough, how to swallow, how to tell us in any means possible that she needed something. She forgot our faces and our voices, and she never felt safe. No matter where she was.

Finally, her illness took everything from her but her capacity to inhale, exhale, repeat, and it was during this time, looking down at her tiny frame, barely raising the bed sheets, that I wished for her to die.

This powerhouse of a woman, who had once been the life, the soul, the party, the center of everyone’s captivated attention, this person who had made strangers laugh and turned heads with her glamour, this essence of song and joy and vibrancy, had been reduced to a terrified shell of a human. I could see that the sun had long since set on the “hilarious phase.”

I don’t blame people who shy away from the suffering phase; it’s horrendous to look upon someone you love turned into someone you don’t recognize. I also have the most enormous respect for healthcare workers who know how to treat such people with dignity and care.

I could no longer see a person when I looked at my grandma. I say now without shame for myself or judgment for others who have thought the same, that I wanted her to die. Because what I really wanted, and what I believe the majority of people who have had similar thoughts really want, is to wish them peace.

When death did come, it wasn’t really a relief, though I was suddenly free to remember her as she was without being confronted by who she had become.

The experience of death itself wasn’t all bad. I went round one final time to visit my grandma before heading back to London. It was one of those still winter nights, where the darkness seems to go on forever, shushing the world in its velvet caress. I breathed that night in good and deep before I went inside.

I was only in my late twenties; I didn’t know how to approach the inevitability of death with the pragmatism of my mother or the heartfelt, unabashed emotion of my step-grandfather. It seems strange, but in that moment of panicked hesitation, an understanding rose up into my being and guided me through. I rubbed moisturizer into her cheeks and drew her eyebrows back on. I brushed her hair, and filed her nails, and tried in vain to get her to have some water. I held her hand and spoke softly to her. I told her of all that I had achieved, that her illness had sadly made her miss. I read her a few passages from her favorite childhood book, The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley, and of course, I sang Elvis. Then, feeling it was time, I leaned in close and said to her, “Hilary Morgan, the stars are waiting for you.” I knew that the afterlife would have bored her to tears, so I tried to make it sound more like an after-party, which I was sure would have tempted her. Then I kissed her on her forehead and tried to leave without anyone seeing me cry.

A few days later, she had the absolutely fabulous timing of dying on New Year’s Day, which I think was genius of her. Each New Year’s Eve, I will raise a glass to my grandma and the person she was.

Lately, the older, more fonder memories have been coming back to me, the ones of my grandmother before she was sick. I can recall singing with her in the bathtub, making her laugh until she cried while my little sister and I did performances of Crocodile Dundee (my little sister was the crocodile), and walking across the sand dunes with her and her two beautiful Irish Red Setters. I remember her voice and the dulcet tones of her singing. I can recall sneaking into her dressing room and spraying her perfume onto the sleeves of my clothes so I could smell her when we were apart. I remember my friends, all a little tipsy before a night out, standing around her kitchen island and asking her for advice, my grandmother among them like some kind of oracle, clinking her ice in her gin and lemonade. Mostly, I remember laughing with her, for she really was quite wicked.

In the almost two years since she left us, the feeling of shame and guilt for wishing death upon her has slowly melted in the warmth of these memories. I’ve been able to finally see the compassion that was there all along.

I also think my grandmother picked New Year’s Day to die because January 2 is my mum’s birthday. My mum, who has always complained she has the worst birthday, clearly thought it couldn’t get any worse, and grandma knew just how to add to it.

But that was my grandma for you: hilarious, glamorous, the life of every party, and partial to some emotional manipulation to ensure we remembered her.

Born in the South Island of New Zealand, Oliviah Rix-Taylor spent her childhood mostly shoeless and surrounded by outrageous scenery. When she was seven, she emigrated with her Welsh mother to a stunning coastal region of Wales. She studied Geography at Leeds university and went on to undertake a Master of Arts in Creative Writing and later a Ph.D. on the exploration of truth in dystopian literature. That insight, coupled with a lifelong love of physics and the nature of reality, inspired her to write her first novel, The Midnight Castle.