Whom shall I honour this Day of the Dead?
Granny? It’s me.
It’s exactly one month before your birthday. A month before I will feel your absence keenly and suddenly even though I try to forget the date and I shall weep, copiously, perhaps in a restaurant embarrassing my husband and alarming my children. Or perhaps in the car, with rage and snot streaming down my nose. Maybe I’ll just wander round the house, uselessly touching things and looking into mirrors hoping to see you there.
Will you come to say hello? Will you greet me again and buy me a sugary, jammy doughnut and introduce me to anyone you can find in your hybrid Lithuanian-German-SouthAfrican-English accent that nobody could ever accurately imitate:
“Hev yo mit mah Grendotter?”
Might you send me a message? Write me one of those nearly illegible letters whose handwriting I have nearly forgotten now? I know I would recognise it if I saw it but they’re all in a suitcase in the loft of my old house and I just can’t bear to open it because all the memories and the smell of you will come tumbling out and my insides might fall out of me at the same time and how would I get them back in?
It took me over two years just to act normal after you died, and the key word in that sentence is act. It still feels all wrong. I still can’t go to Hampstead 12 years later in case you aren’t there. Or drive down The Bishop’s Avenue because you don’t live there anymore. I wonder if I ever will ever walk on the Heath again but mostly I think I’ll avoid it because you haven’t promised to meet me there and that is so terrible to contemplate that I feel sick.
I sometimes try to tell Five about you – she is your namesake, you know – but I find that I just can’t tell her the really important things. She’s not big enough.
How can I explain to her that when my whole family fell to pieces and my parents turned into different people than they had been before, you stayed reassuringly the same?
You never changed on me and you never went away.
(I mean you did do mad things like run willy-nilly on to tube carriages with me following you, breathless and only then ask where it was going, but you always made sure I got on with you.)
How could I describe to someone who has always been cherished, that you were the one and only person who always made me feel completely loveable, adorable, and the most important person in your life?
(Remember traveling all the way across London by public transport on your own when you were well into your 80’s to have a Chinese take-away with me, giggling, tipsy, after half a glass of sweet white wine?)
Children need that from somewhere. It’s critical.
I took quite a long time growing up. I got tripped up in a few places and I slowed myself down with some profoundly stupid choices but you optimistically saw the best in me.
You stuck around and held my hand, made me cups of (dreadful) tea, took me out to dinners and made me endure endless ANC bazaars until you were sure I could handle life on my own.
I wasn’t sure I could do it but you must have been.
About 18 months after you died I met Husband. You would have loved him. Sometimes he even reminds me of you. If he doesn’t exactly agree with me he says;
“Vell I don’t know”
And it drives me MAD like it used to when you said it.
I want to shout
“But you DO know BECAUSE I’M TELLING YOU!!!”
But it also makes me smile a bit because it’s like having you back for a moment.
So, how to honour you?
With a jam doughnut? A resounding chorus of Nkosi Sikeleli Africa?
A wash with Imperial Leather soap?
Or just these words I have written and a small, private weep.
How you are loved and missed, still.
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What a wonderful memorial. I loved my Grandpa just so much too and when he used to tell me he will die one day and leave me it left me bereft. I treasure those speical moments of army and navey tablets and a sly babysham and him letting me pinch a cigarette and prentending he was none the wiser.
You granny sounds like she was a real character as old people should be, hold tight to them and then breath
Beautiful post. My Nan was one of the better adults around in my childhood… always slightly kooky and that why I loved her. Much maligned by my mother but only because she was her in-law. She adored me and my brother and both her and our Grandad were such fun to be around. I think however you honour her she will be proud.
Was this the Nan we had lunch with all those years ago? She was lovely. And now I miss my Nans, both of them, even the difficult one. All the love I and acceptance I just took for granted and even sneered at as a teen. Sigh.
I so love this post, it is the best. I too had a very special relationship with my granny and adored her so much, not a day goes by that I do not think of her. I know she is always with me in spirit, as I feel her strength. I give thanks that she at least lived to hold my youngest and had the pleasure to see the boys grow up, even if it was only for a few years. Brought tears to my eyes, but good ones x
What a lovely tribute, and I’m so sorry for your loss. I never knew either of my grandmothers (one died when I was little; the other lived in Florida and was only known to me as the spindly handwriting on a Christmas card), so I envy people who had such warm and loving experiences with theirs. I’m glad for you that you had her at the time you needed her most.
i love the way you have written about her- the trips around London with her while she was giggly, tipsy on sweet wine. the older i grow, i feel i miss my grandmummies more. i want to know so many things about them,which i didnt know about as a kid, like how did it feel for them to be strong women in a society like pakistan where women couldnt really be themselves. my parents cannot give me the answers…it is so beautiful the way you have written about your grandmummy, and the fact that you have still not gotten over her loss is sad, but beautiful. five&two are so lucky to have a mum who can share her stories with them. here’s to your grandmummy. xo
What a lovely post, you really do her justice. How wonderful that you had someone like that in your life.
I am sorry that my Grandparents passed away before I found my husband and had my baby. I will keep them alive in our thoughts with stories of them when Piran is older though, and he has Grandparents of his own and memories to make himself.
So beautiful. Thanks. I feel this way about my grandmother, too. Still talk to her when I fold sheets (incorrectly, as she would point out, and does, from the beyond. “I KNOW, Gran!”). Lovely, moving tribute.
Lovely post. Made me wish I’d known her. Being a child of older parents, 3 of my 4 grandparents were gone before I was born. I have only vague memories of my mother’s mother who died while I was still in primary school. I always envied classmates who had grandparents involved in their lives. One can’t have too much love in a young life.
A beautiful post. You are lucky to have those treasured memories. I hope this month isn’t too painful for you.
Such a wonderful, wonderful post. I so wish my husband and dad could have met. But I see so much of my dad in my sister that I hope, in some way, that my husband and future children will know him through her. Sigh. xxxx
I love that you had such a wonderful woman in your life. Hugs to you now, for your loss…x
I never had a grandmother. I wish I had. Now I am a grandmother and I feel the same way about my granddaughter as your grandmother obviously felt about you. It is SOOO important and I love being it. Thank you for such a superb loveletter. I believe all her wrinkles are beaming!
You are right, every child needs someone like that in their lives. Someone who is not their parent. You were very lucky to have her, you must miss her enormously.
What a beautiful post… so much of what you say reminds me of my grandmother and how much I miss her today.
Like you I would love her to know my husband and children. I would love them to know her and understand why she meant so much to me.
Thank you for this gorgeous post x
Lovely blog post (I came here via the BMB Blogging Carnival link).
It reminds me of my grandfather – German – who spoke English with a very heavy Black Forest accent. He tried to help me with my German homework once and I went back to school with a similar accent. My teacher was very concerned about the harshness of my accent 😀
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