A letter to my grandmother
There is no subtlety in death, it is like a hurricane out at sea. Tossed and turned, there is no escape. We are all made small in its passing, but we are at least together. Even I, eighteen thousand kilometres away.
“I see you are tired
But I cannot walk these steps for you
You must walk them yourselves
But I will walk them with you
I will be there with you”
Gran, I have loved you all my life. There is no moment that I can remember untouched by that feeling. It is perhaps the task of all grandparents to love their grandchildren, to spoil and cuddle and give them refuge in the world. If this is so, you excelled beyond measure. Perhaps in return our task as grandchildren is to believe naively that our grandparents all live forever. I thought you would live forever.
At your house there were pale green frogs for chasing in the long grass, porridge-eating cats in the coal shed, dogs on the sofas, chickens that laid blue eggs in the yard, a rag-tag flock of perennially bewildered sheep in the paddock, fierce snail-gobbling muscovy ducks in the vegetable garden, and for a while there was a parrot that hung from the kitchen ceiling! A veritable menagerie of delights for the small flock of grandchildren that trailed constantly through your home.
What treasures that house held for us. The front room where we pressed our noses up to the glass to eyeball the contents of the old china cabinet. The spare room, filled to the brim with the lives of your own children, where we read old comics and played with Basil Brush. The playhouse, stacked so high with brick-a-brack as to be un-enterable, ripe to be pried open and boggled at with every visit.
We spread mechano and old train-sets out on the lounge floor, as grandad took over the dining table with his latest boat project, dad read the papers, and you and mum, and Jude and Boo worked magic in the tardis-like kitchen. The enamel teapot bubbled like a caldron on the coal range. Matt watched ‘The Young Ones’ in his room. We fought over the washing up. Your life was so full of people; full even before we grandchildren came into it. And yet you made so much room for us - made us feel that we were the centre of your universe.
“I see you are in pain
but I cannot cry these tears for you
You must cry them yourselves
but I will cry them with you
I will cry with you”
Oh Gran, eventually you rivalled Steve Austin with your technological improvements. Teeth that could shoot out and nip fingers; new, and then newer knees and walking frames, wheelchairs and the long arm of the winkle-picker: ready to catch cookie-stealing criminals unawares. And what biscuits they were! Like scavengers, we raided cupboards beneath the kitchen benches searching for gold. You’d think our parents never fed us! The best were those into which you’d pressed your finger, then filled with raspberry jam. Sometimes I make them – though they’re not a patch on yours. Sometimes I buy your favourite chocolate-covered ginger and sit at the edge of the Oslo fjord. Then there is only the ocean between us, and oceans can always be crossed.
When I got married I wore your wedding dress. The dress endures, together with a strawberry bowl, a summer frock, and six teaspoons. Thirty five years of unconditional love reduced to nine small objects, and a handful of photographs. Far, far more precious are your letters. You truly were a wonderful correspondent. Later, when it became impossible for you to write, we plotted international escapades from your care-home via phone instead - silliness interspersed with sadness as eventually even your hearing decreased. It was heartbreaking to experience your world shrinking before me. But even the world is not so big an obstacle. When you fell ill in 2014 I came home to hold your hand. I held it just over one year ago throughout Daniel's wedding, and long into the night. I wish I could be holding it now.
“I see you are afraid
But I cannot go into death for you
You must taste that alone
But I will make death into life for you”
Dearest Gran, it seems like just yesterday you whispered, ‘I don’t suppose that I shall see you again.’ It was meant as a goodbye for my trip, but perhaps I have become more bold of late, so I held your hands tight and kissed your cheek: ‘No indeed,’ I said, ‘I don’t very much suppose you will.’ I curled my mouth toward your ear ‘But I do love you so very, very much’. Just two weeks later you were proved right.
It will be a long time now before I come to see you I expect. But we are used to time apart, you and I. Time and distance mean nothing to us. It is one year since you passed, and again it is spring. The snowdrops are just raising their bowed heads from the earth, fat bumblebees are hovering from crocus to crocus. My hands are dirty. I have been turning over the soil, working dead leaves into the dirt. It is wet with my tears.
Soon I will sow my gardens once more with the sweet peas you taught me to love so much. I will fill my pockets and trail seeds through my fingers. I let them grow up along the scuffs of earth that stud the footpaths here, let them wind around wire fences, add them to windowsills and street-side gardens; to the wild fallow corners of city parks. I can still find you everywhere.
I will make death into life for you.
With love always
Katie pie
