It is 11 o’clock in the morning on the day that I fly to Norway to live for 5 months. I am having breakfast with my girlfriend and Granny, she is 93. I look over to ask what she would like for lunch to see that she has her head in her hands, grimacing as if car sick. I ask what is wrong and she says it is nothing she just feels tired. However I have been here before.

 

Two years ago, it was also mid-morning, and I was also having breakfast and she also just put her head in her hands for a moment complaining of feeling tired. That time I had to carry her onto the floor while calling an ambulance to stop her seizures.

 

I know what is coming, over the course of ten minutes she gets quieter and her head gets heavier in her hand. She sinks lower into her chair. I leave the room to call my Mum to come downstairs, Granny isn’t feeling well. We come back and look at her. We do not initially realise that she is unconscious because her eyes are open. We call an ambulance, we think she is having a stroke. Its happened before.

 

Her breathing starts to rasp and lurch with all the regularity of a bent bicycle wheel struggling up a hill. I hold onto her to stop her falling out of her chair. She feels as if she has nothing in her anymore, just a loose, heaviness. I look at her, concerned for her breathing. Her little eyes are wide open and staring, her mouth hangs wide. I can see all the way down the back of her throat. I am reminded that there is nothing in her anymore. I think this is a view of my granny I never wanted to see. My mum looks at me and says that she thinks she is going to die.

 

There is a silence, suddenly punctuated by the sound of someone eating toast. I look round, my girlfriend has not moved since this begun. Embarrassed to be witnessing a family drama which she has no part in and feels unwelcome. She is finishing her breakfast in as small a way as possible. Trying not to be there while remaining available to help.

 

I am told to hold her head right back by the man on the end of the phone. I feel like an executioner in a hostage tape. She breathes easier but with a ferocious snore.

 

The paramedics arrive. I move to get out of their way but they want me to continue helping her breathe. A large South-African paramedic instructs me in how to partially dislocate her jaw with my fingers so she can breathe without snoring. I look at my fingers as they poke round the jawbone into her soft face and think that this should be more distressing than it is.

 

It is while I am partially dislocating my Granny’s jaw and watching the South African try and slide a lubricated plastic tube up her nose into her throat that I look down at the paramedic’s watch and see the time. I leave for Norway in six and a half hours.

 

I decide what I will do today according to each possible outcomes. If she dies, I will not fly today. If she will die shortly, I will not fly today. If she has had a major stroke as we suspect she has and will be in hospital for a long time, I will not fly today. If this is some kind of minor stroke, or infection or seizure I will fly today.

 

My Granny stutters into consciousness. “Ooh, I’m back.” A laugh shimmies round the room. The South African starts to ask her questions in the exaggerated voice that is reserved for the old.

 

Another ambulance crew arrives. We are all confused as to why. They were in the area and thought they could be helpful. Nothing but the best we joke. At this point my brother also turns up from a party the night before, looking more like a stroke victim than anyone. He has a dirty, tired look and his hair is greasy and jagged. While they do an ECG he loudly makes a cup of coffee and looks guilty.

 

Twenty minutes later she is bound to a wheel chair with blankets and straps and lifted up the stairs and out the house. She looks back at the half eaten breakfast, the morning papers and sunny garden. The morning we were having.

 

As the two ambulances depart with my Granny and accompanying Mum, me and my Dad joke: ’One to carry the furs’ etc.  I leave in five and half hours.

 

I go inside unsure what to do. There are a dozen fears and impending tasks jostling for pole emotion and inside its as if I’ve been carbonated and shook. Moving to a country where I do not speak the language, to live with strangers in a strange city that is dark 19 hours a day was daunting when I woke up. Now it is now no longer in the shortlist of worries. I will treat myself to those fears on the plane later.

 

A 9pm flight to a small local airport with two enormous bags, and a bike by yourself is possibly the most inconvenient way to leave the country for half a year. But flying on a bank holiday is expensive and it was the only reasonably priced flight that day. I had thought however it would allow me a gentle day of packing and lunch with my family. A slow, undramatic goodbye for a very long time.

 

For the next five hours I packed as quickly as I could. Not stopping to sit down or eat. At quarter past five in the evening I realised I had not eaten and asked my girlfriend to please shove a frozen pizza in the oven and make me a sandwich for the plane. I went back upstairs and came back to find it cooked ten minutes later. I swallowed it in three bites, the barely cooked egg caustic in my throat.

 

I pile my bags into the car. She was going to come with us to the hospital to say goodbye but her seat was filled with my bags. So I said goodbye then and there and apologetically kicked her out. See you in a month I shouted.

 

Parking outside the hospital, the planned half hour had been reduced to ten minutes to say goodbye to my Mum and Granny. I went in to find my Granny on a bed looking tired and bored but amused. And my Mum far worse. She was with a doctor so whispering to not disturb them I said goodbye to my Mum and Brother. Both asked whether I had my passport. My Mum starts to cry. I give my Granny a kiss on the head and leave. I tell her to make sure she's still here when I get back while estimating how likely that is.

 

Only after I’ve said goodbye to my Dad at the airport and am on the other side of security does the buzzing and fizzing recede. I stand still and breath deeply. I  feel wobbly and unsupported like a hot cake pushed out of a tin. I buy a pint and wander onto my crowded plane. I look out the window as the plane takes off feeling twitchy but calm. I fall very deeply asleep and wake up in Norway. It is snowing and a different country and I am living here for five months and it is exciting.