Grandma Plays with Our Nerves: A Sickness Simulated or a Cry for Help?
My name is Eleanor. I’m 37, married, with a mother who’s 56 and a grandmother—Grandma Margaret—who’s 85. We live in a small Cotswold village where winters bite deep, and the roads between houses stretch like endless threads, especially when you’re racing through the snow in the dead of night.
Grandma Margaret, despite her years, stubbornly lives alone in an old stone cottage on the village outskirts. She flatly refuses to move in with Mum, though the offer’s been made a dozen times. “A woman’s home is her castle,” she insists, and nothing will pry her from it. But lately, her solitude seems to weigh too heavy, and she’s found a way to keep us forever on edge.
Nearly every day now, she calls Mum or me, her voice trembling down the line, whispering that she’s “feeling poorly.” Her breath hitches; she moans about her heart “fluttery as a moth” or her legs “gone wobbly.” We drop everything, rush to her, fists clenched with dread—only to find her bustling about, offering tea and biscuits, cracking jokes as if the whole thing were a lark. And there we stand, hearts hammering, not knowing whether to laugh or weep.
We’re weary of this game. Every call jolts us like a live wire, yet we can’t ignore it. What if *this* time it’s real? What if we stay home, and the worst happens? The thought gnaws at us, relentless. Fear grips us tighter than the icy wind outside.
It began a year ago. I remember us tearing through a blizzard at four in the morning, me in a ratty jumper, Mum in her dressing gown under a coat. We thought we’d find her breath’s last gasp—but there she was, beaming, claiming it was “just a spot of dizziness.” Within minutes, she was fetching her famous blackberry jam, urging us to tuck in. We were stunned but chalked it up to a fluke.
We tried to reason with her. Begged her to see a doctor, but she waved us off. “Those quacks’ll rob you blind,” she scoffed. So, we brought one to her. He checked her pulse, listened to her chest, and declared her fit as a fiddle for her age. “She’s lonely,” he told us. “Visit more, and the calls will stop.” How wrong he was.
We *do* visit. I live an hour’s drive away; Mum’s closer, but after work, in the grind of traffic and exhaustion, daily trips are impossible. Weekends we take turns—me with groceries and gossip, Mum with hoovering and hymns. Holidays, we arrive together, arms full of flowers and cheer. Yet it’s never enough. She wants more—our attention, our worry, our hours.
Mum’s offered her the best room in her house a hundred times. “I won’t be a burden,” Grandma snaps—then rings us at midnight, gasping about phantom pains. “I’ll die where I belong.” The words cut like knives, but what can we do?
We’ve pleaded with her to stop the false alarms. Explained how each call steals our sleep, frays our nerves. She doesn’t listen—or won’t. The calls keep coming, and every time, we’re trapped: Do we go, or stay? Trust or doubt? The fear of being wrong haunts us.
Sometimes I think she’s just lonely. Thirsting for chatter, for warmth. Maybe these calls are her crooked way of pulling us close. But why choose such cruelty? Why make us live in fear? I don’t know the answer. We love her, but this game drains us dry. And yet—when the phone rings, we’ll go. Because if we don’t, and something happens… that guilt would crush us forever.
