I hope I don’t disappoint anyone today who is expecting a lovely happy photo of Lara and a tale of fun and friendship. I promise to post a separate gallery later with some fun, happy shots but for now, please bear with me and hear my story of today.

My grandmother, who is 87 years old, attempted suicide last night. She was told yesterday afternoon by her youngest child (and her only boy – her favourite) that after living with him for fifteen years she was no longer welcome to live there any more and that she would have to move to an old-people’s home because no-one else wanted her either. (By the way, the latter part of this statement is completely untrue and we don’t know what made him say it.)

So, she went to her room and took a whole week’s supply of the painkillers the doctor had given her for her arthritis. Fortunately, the pills were not paracetamol-based and so she had a ‘lucky’ escape. She was taken to hospital, checked over and discharged into the care of my Mum and Dad who, as pensioners themselves, left home at 11pm to do the 150 mile drive from their home to the hospital where she had been taken, collect her and drive her home to their house. They arrived back at 4.30am.

It’s hard to imagine how anyone could be so unspeakably cruel. It gets worse. When my Nan told my aunt (by marriage) what she had done, my aunt phoned my uncle’s cellphone rather than an ambulance. When my uncle arrived home, he phoned my Mum and told her that my grandmother had said she’d taken pills. My Mum asked if an ambulance had been called and his response was ‘no, she says she doesn’t want one’.

It gets worse still. While my uncle was in my Nan’s room trying to establish what she had taken, my aunt called up the stairs ‘make sure she takes the rest’. What kind of woman would say such an appalling thing?

When the ambulance arrived, my Nan went off to the hospital, some considerable distance away from my Uncle’s house alone because no-one would go with her.

My Mum phoned to tell my Uncle that her and my Dad would go and collect my Nan and bring her home with them. She asked my Uncle to make up a suitcase of some clean clothes for my Nan that they could pick up after collecting her from the hospital. When they arrived, all of my Nan’s possessions (bedding, photos, everything) were bagged up in black bin sacks in their front porch. At the age of 87, my Nan had just been ‘thrown out’ by her youngest son with not so much as a second thought.

Now, my Nan is alive and we have been told she’s done no serious long-term damage but that she will be tired and groggy for a few days. My Mum and her other siblings are all devastated and angry.

My Nan, though, had to wake up this morning and know she will never go ‘home’ to the place she has lived for fifteen years and she will never see her great-grandchildren again whom she adores.

Her body may be mended but her heart is as surely broken as if it had been smashed onto the floor. She will probably never get over the pain.

Me? I hope he never has another night’s sleep again. I hope when he looks in the bathroom mirror in the morning that he can never bring himself to look into his own eyes again.


A photo of my folks and my Nan in happier times.