My Name is Grace

                                                                                              Grace

My world has finally gone downhill. My name is Grace McKay and I have a caregiver called Susan. She has been looking after me my whole life, you see. When my mother walked out on my father and I, I was only eleven days old. Father had no clue what to do with me after she left. Then one day he saw Susan at the shop which was around the corner from the meadow where all the pretty flowers grew. She was speaking with the friendly owner and his wife. My father and Susan got to talking. He found out she had nursing qualifications, but had decided she preferred caregiving. He asked her if she would be interested in helping him care for me. Luckily for me she agreed. Susan cared for me my whole life and never expected anything in return. My father had wished to marry her but she politely refused. I wanted my father to be happy but I didn't blame her. My father had been a lazy drunk for years - he was laid off from his job at the saw mill for drinking on site.

I was twelve when my father took his own life. He had been depressed since my mother left and somehow I knew that he could never truly recover from that and always looked upon me as a burden. He used to tell me about my mother and all the things they did together. He told me about their trip to Paris where I was conceived and where they took a boat down The River Seine. He told me that she became unhappy with him just sitting around all day and not doing anything but she found she was pregnant with me and decided to stay with him for the benefit of my happiness. After I was born my mother could no longer put up with my father and made the decision to leave. During the night she slipped away, leaving only a note for me to open on my seventeenth birthday.

After father's death, Susan became my full-time caregiver. She never once left my side even when things got tough. The year I turned thirteen, I began to feel ill on a regular basis. I had to stay home from school it's not like I wanted to go anyway - but that's another story. Susan began to worry a lot and called the doctor over. It took him half an hour to figure out what was wrong with me. The doctor, Nick, diagnosed me with Sarcoidosis, which causes inflammation and mostly affects the immune system, and to make matters worse I was diagnosed with stage two bone cancer. I was on bed rest and had to take three kinds of medication four times a day. Susan would prepare the medication weeks before I had to take it. I knew Susan found it hard to see me this way but it never showed on her face. Susan always seemed like she had this emptiness inside her. She had been with me all my life and never left my side. I knew her emptiness was because she had no love in her life... well from a man at least.

As a thirty year old woman, Susan had never found the one she had been looking for. She didn't believe in sex before marriage or love at first sight. She often talked of love as the most beautiful thing in the world, which I never truly understood. The only thing I could think was, how could I truly know who I am, and what does life have beyond love?

Thinking about my life now, I was never sure if I would ever truly find myself when I had no one to guide me. Things didn't get any better, if anything the medicine made me worse. Susan began to stress, but always managed to keep it from showing on her face around me. She called Doctor Nick to come and assess me. When he arrived, Susan told him that I had not been coping well and that the medication wasn't helping. Nick was nice and gentle while he was treating me. He always made me laugh so I wouldn't worry too much, but I knew that something was wrong and I wasn't getting better. There was something inside me that just kept fighting back. Doctor Nick left the room closing the door behind him. I knew that something was wrong. I could hear Susan and the Nick talking. I knew somehow that this had gone from bad to worse.

Susan walked into the room with tears streaming down her cheeks. She looked at me with a helplessness in her eyes. She didn't have to say anything. I felt tears rolling down my face. I had never really cried about my illness before. But I knew that I was going to have to go soon leaving behind this world that I hadn't had the time to truly explore, or help people who hadn't experienced real joy in their life. Susan walked up and hugged me, not saying a word.