Brown-eyed Girl Went to Heaven.

 What does grief feel like?

This frequent question is one that still 6 months later I can't answer.

It feels like a million years have passed since I last saw and spoke to my Aunty Paysh. I miss her so much and even now 6 months later I feel a constant ache in my heart.

Time goes on but the love you feel for somebody never passes. I can still hear her voice in my head.

It almost feels like a dream; that one day I'm going to wake up and talk to her. She was only 66, she had so much life to still live and it feels like a cruel joke being played on my family. It's strange to talk about her in the past tense because sometimes I can be in a conversation with somebody and talk about her in the present tense then suddenly it comes crashing down on me like a ton of bricks that she really has passed onto another plane.

The emotions my family feel is still so raw. I remember wishing her a New year and saying ''How great this year was going to be for all of us'' to then In June when it all went wrong.

You see, my Aunt had a crappy past 6 years with ill health. The pain and suffering all started on a Holiday in the Caribbean with my cousin. A freak quad bike accident occurred in which it fell on top of her. Looking back it was amazing how we didn't lose her then. Anyway, it broke her back and it squashed her bowel.

I don't think I remember a time when all my family was healthy. All the way through my teenage years me and my cousin have had to deal with family members being ill - My aunt, My mum, My dad, and my Uncle.

Her bowel removal operation came out of nowhere. One minute I'm laughing with my best friend that my Mum has taken my Aunt to hospital for being constipated to then being told she has to have a life-changing operation. It was scary, we had no idea if she would live through it but she did as the survivor that she was. It was incredibly hard for my cousin, I couldn't imagine how painful that must have been for her.

My Aunt suffered from mental health illness, so the operation took the stuffing out of her. She spent 7 weeks in hospital and then my Mum took her home to ours to nurse her back to health. During this time at ours was hard for everybody. The way different family members live can be very different. This was the case with us; In the end, my Mum and Aunt had a massive argument and didn't speak for months.

Two stubborn women; Two best-friends dying inside because they missed each other finally made up. My aunt rang my mum asking us to come round to hers because she didn't feel well. After making up I feel in a way made them both appreciate what the other meant to each other and their relationship went from strength to strength.

A few years later my Aunts life had changed with her stoma bag; She was unable to do what she used to and I think this really got her down in the dumps. The NHS offered her the reversal operation. After years of finally getting back to a happy place, she decided to take the decision to take up this offer. Though our family was unsure and didn't want her to go onto the operating table we understood. At the end of the day, we weren't the ones that had to live with a bag on our stomach.

She went on the operating table on my 20th birthday last year (July 11th). My mum was panicking through the day which was starting to ruin my birthday. As selfish as this sounds but I was really disappointed because finally the day where it was to celebrate me, my mum's attention was else-where. This was really selfish of me and when I look back on it now I should have never felt that. It got scary later in the evening when my Aunt wasn't waking up. My cousin was sobbing over the phone, My mum was a panicked mess and I was trying to help everybody. Luckily enough she survived with a pierced bladder. The doctor had to put a mesh over her stomach because she had a hernia; I remember him saying that he wasn't happy doing this because it can cause an infection but yet again she survived against all odds.

Fast forward a year- My aunty was not really the same after that. In our deep conversations, she told me that this time around her recovery was worse. She was suffering from really bad depression and she hardly had an appetite (Anyone that knows her will know she is a massive foodie especially for curries). I'm not sure and I suppose I will never really know but I think she felt worse than what we were made to believe but she was one of the types of people that would bottle her feelings because she knows it would scare us.

In June 2020 my Aunt suffered a bad stroke that left her unable to communicate and paralyzed half her body. Leading up to this she was complaining of being physically in agony and she thought she had MS but the doctor misdiagnosed her. My mum spoke to her on facetime every-day leading up to that fateful day but we kept telling her to ''stretch'' not knowing how sinister it really was.

The day she had the stroke, luckily her lodger was there. She ran into him her speech affected instantly and he called the ambulance. It breaks our hearts to have been so helpless and how scared she must have felt. Clueless in the garden in Spain my Mum and Dad was teaching me how to jive. My phone was upstairs so when we went in we had hundreds of missed calls from my cousin and Uncle back in the UK. When we received the call to tell us what had happened we were speechless. Everyone was so clueless about what was happening and the hospital was giving us mixed messages through the night.

To cut a long story short, The nurse that was meant to protect her had dropped her on the floor. It was devastating to hear this because who knows if this made her stroke worse. We were all in so much pain; it felt like my heart was being pulled slowly in half. It was just coming out of lockdown but still, we were unable to get a flight for another couple of weeks.

The Torture we felt. We got regular updates from the hospital and the family that had seen her. That is not my story to tell but every day was a hit and miss with hope.

On the Saturday of the 04/07/2020 was the day that I had gone to visit her. Covid allowed only one family member once a day to visit. Nothing could brace me for what I witnessed. Out of everyone minus my cousin had the most hope- I'm usually a very positive person but the day I witnessed a shell of my vibrant aunty physically broke my heart.

I have never known somebody to cry in my arms the way my poor Aunt did. At first, she didn't recognize me until it registered in her brain. Her uncontrollable sobs unable to physically communicate with me unless it was a Yes, No, or Ok had thrown me for 6. My aunt was one of the funniest people I have ever met. Her personality was so sarcastic that you couldn't help but fall in love with her straight away. To see my Aunt like this one shocked me because it sounds stupid but when I thought of her immediate family I was always thinking of my Mum, Cousin, and Uncle even though I was her closest Neice. Even the doctors told my mum that on that day they were shocked at how much she cried.

The way she cried in my arms like a Mother who had just witnessed her baby get run over and the way she physically clung to me for affection was just earth-shattering. At that moment I hadn't realized how much I truly loved her. To this day this memory scars the hell out of me. It's something that I have had to try to block out of my mind. To see one of your loved ones in so much pain and agony is heart-wrenching. This probably will be of the worst days in my life. I think my aunt had full comprehension- When calming her down we managed to non-verbally talk about past memories and I kept her up-to-date with everything in my life. My aunt also loved beauty like me so I brought a load of beauty treatments that we did together, For me, things looked up but we had a long road ahead. I kept so much strength in that hospital room, looking back I'm not sure how I did it. But once I had to leave (they allowed me 2 hours) the second minute I got in the car I couldn't stop crying all day; My uncle and Aunt surprised us with dinner at theirs but I felt so physically guilty that I could eat, I could talk, I could walk that I just needed to cry in bed and sleep.

^ This day was the last day that I saw her alive. I look back on this day with mixed emotions. On one hand, I feel incredibly lucky I got to say goodbye to her without realizing it and I gave her joy by making her laugh and feeling beautiful but on the other hand to think this was the last conversation I was going to have with her is heart-breaking.

By the 8/07/2020 My Aunts health rapidly declined. On the morning of this day my Mum went to visit her again. When walking in my Aunt apparently looked awfully Yellow. By the time my Mum left she looked a little better but by the evening her health had deteriorated.

That night my parents were getting an Uncle Sam. Me and my Cousin were watching game of thrones when the phone rang and the hospital told my Cousin that it looked likely she wasn't going to make it. My cousin was hysterical- I mean could you imagine receiving a phone call like this? I was trying to be a good support system to her at the time because at that point she needed me.

Each day got worse and worse with the news. The next day me and my cousin said our goodbyes to her in the hospital. She had been slowly sedated and we could still hear her murmur in her sleep though the words were only coming out was Yes/No- In my heart I feel my Nan and Grandad were talking to her and was waiting to take her with them. My cousin also believes that my Aunt squeezed her hand. They say the last thing to go is your hearing but we were so scared that she would wake up and be hysterical so we said our silent goodbyes. The strength this took from my cousin is mind-blowing I am so proud of her.

My Birthday was the 11th and we had arranged prior to have a house party up In London. We debated to not go but our family persuaded us because the hospital had assured us that she was sedated deeper and deeper as each day passed and was on the medicine to fight this infection in her lung.

You see how the stroke was caused was because my Aunt developed a slow- ongoing heart infection called Endocarditis which damaged one of her main heart valves so she needed an open heart surgery but due to the face that she was so badly damaged mentally too that she would be unable to have it because it would cause more oxygen to be lost from her already affected brain.

Overall this whole situation was just so cruel. We did eventually decide to go up the London and try to have a good time, though in the back of our minds we knew there was an impending situation. During the space of my birthday to the day we came home she declined even more. A second heart valve had been damaged and her kidneys were also not working. The only thing keeping my Aunt alive was modern medicine.

Each day was a painful reminder. We lived on edge at every given minute because we knew she was dying. There was nothing left the doctors could do, they kept giving her a special injection to boost her immune system but nothing was working apart from her Liver.

The doctors had made the decision to stop everything and told us to start saying our goodbyes. She became sedated to the point of being unconscious now.

On Tuesday the 14th of July a month exactly after her stroke we received the phone call at 7 am to come to the hospital and say our final goodbyes. When we got there my Dad and cousin went in to see her. The next thing we heard was hysterical crying. My aunt's eyes were open (Due to muscle waste) but honestly how much crueler could life be why did my cousin have to see this forever haunting her?

I was unable to say my final goodbye. It's a decision that I do not regret because the second I saw her room open and her lying in it, I just broke down. I was so close yet so far but that haunting memory of seeing her pretty much dead in the room was too much for me. Me, my Cousin and Mum decided we had to go back to my Aunts flat. We couldn't;t say that last goodbye and I think it was for the best.

Around 2 pm my Mum had a weird feeling (My next blog Ghosts) and 2 seconds later the phone call rang to tell us that she had passed away. The situation of this will be explained in my next blog but that day was super freaky (in a good way)

To Sum up the whole situation, it was devastating. To lose your loved one in such a tragic way is a part of life that I will never seem to understand. The moral of the story is to never take your loved ones for granted, One day they won't be here so therefore make the best out of the time you have. Life is too short to be unhappy and depressed, love those around you and make memories.

To my darling Aunty, Life didn't deserve your loving ways. You were too good for this world and I am sorry that you had to deal with so much pain. Nothing is going to bring you back but thank you for being such a caring and loving aunt to me. The love, the memories, the conversations, the laughs we shared will always be remembered. Though you won't be here to see me and Roch's children in the human form I know you are forever looking down on us and protecting us. Wait for us in heaven until it's our turn (In a long time hopefully) keep jiving and dancing with Nan and Grandad.

Until we meet again,

My brown eyed girl x

Erin

19/06/1954 - 14/07/2020