old woman

B and I were in the house of an elderly relative who was sometimes my great grandmother and sometimes B's relative. We were staying with her for a short time and while we were there we were helping her around the house. I felt some guilt as I realised how much she normally had to cope with on her own. At one point we were standing in a dark hallway. I looked up at B and the old woman and screamed. I am not sure why. The woman fainted and I felt awful. I lay beside her and talked her through it and then, when she was ready to stand, I stood with her, using my body to lever her up from the floor to an upright position. I needed to put something in the kitchen rubbish bin so I walked into the kitchen and over to the fireplace where the bin was placed. It was overflowing. Food scraps, flower stalks and all sorts of rubbish were piled on the floor around the bin. It looked as though plates had been scraped directly into the open boxes and bags that spilled around the bin. B and I started to clean up. I found a huge orange garbage bag and shook it open, filling it with air. I held it while B started to throw the rubbish inside. We were nearly finished when the bottom of the bag split open and the rubbish tipped out, all of the floor. We would have to begin again.

Later, B and I were browsing in the cosmetics department of a store. Again we were with an elderly female relative. We tested fragrances and admired the colours of the makeup. Afterwards, we travelled down a lift to the street. I had the feeling that we were in a different part of the world, that we had crossed a river or a sea and now we were aiming to arrive somewhere. The urban street stretched up before us, incredibly steep. We could not see over the peak but I imagined that the street continued to dip and rise over the hills beyond. The day grew dark and from the top of the hill, water began to trickle down the gutters. The trickle grew and soon water was rushing like a stream and then a river down the hill. We waded as far as we could go and then succumbed to the water, holding onto poles to anchor ourselves and ducking under the rising water as it flowed over our heads. Night fell and finally the water began to subside. We slept for a while and woke in the morning with water still ankle deep but the threat was gone. Only B and I were there. A car pulled up beside us and there, lying on the back seat, was our elderly relative. I was glad that she was safe but I was worried about her. She was asleep with tube in her nose to help her breathe.