Celebrating My Nanna’s Long Life
We lost my lovely, lovely Nanna a few months ago.
It is agony writing those words, to commit them to the page. The sadness, the tears, the she-will-walk-through-the-door-tomorrow feeling remain torturous.
I’ve found it hard to talk about — wanting to avoid confirming what I already know to be true — but recently my friend Becca gently told me that it can be unknowingly comforting to talk about those we’ve lost. So here I am, with a few words about my wonderful, unique, fiery Nanna.
She was an absolute force, but that was the only way to survive as an evacuee — an outsider — during World War 2, the eldest with six younger brothers. With Britain rebuilding after the war, Nanna married young and began a family home. She mastered crispy yet fluffy roast potatoes, and her homemade pastry far exceeded the quality of the ready-rolled available in stores today. Later, nearing the end of the second wave of feminism, Nanna had started working for a major financial company, a career she held and loved until she retired in her 60s.
My Nan was overwhelmingly kind. I was a challenging child: I refused to brush my teeth, I hated washing my hair, and I wouldn’t eat anything. I despised baked beans but loved the bean juice, so my Nanna would heat the beans, then strain them through a sieve so I could have just bean juice on toast. When I was older, she gifted me money towards my driving lessons in an envelope with glued photos of cars cut from the newspaper, writing on the front “Beep beep, Alice on the road!” And during my time in Hong Kong, she climbed the 103 stairs (in a dodgy, barely-lit staircase) just to see my first post-uni apartment. She was 85 — and wobbly on her feet — at the time.
We talked about these and many other stories a few weeks after her passing when we held an intimate celebration of life at home to honour her. For reasons I won’t delve into, Nanna’s final wish was not to have a traditional funeral, but my Mum and I felt that her long 90-and-a-bit years deserved an observance of some sort.
As the sky cried and rained, guests arrived wearing bright colours (Nan’s favourite was turquoise), and were welcome to receive a spritz of Yves Saint Laurent’s Rive Gauche, the only perfume Nan has worn since it launched in the 1970s. (Lizzie Ostrom perfectly describes in her book A History of Scents that “Rive Gauche was for sassy young women going at ninety miles per hour.” I know I speak for many when I say that sassy is one of the first adjectives people would use to describe Nan.)
We ordered all her favourite foods: sausage rolls; salt and vinegar crisps; cheese straws from Gail’s. A collage of photos, from Nan in her early 20s up until her 90th birthday last year, hung along our living room wall. Those photos jogged many a memory; our afternoon full of historic tales generously sprinkled with amusement and hilarity.
When everyone dispersed, Mum and I retrieved the bottle of Laurent Perrier that Nanna was given on her 90th birthday, and we drank the whole bottle whilst watching both Mamma Mia films. The movies, along with ABBA more widely, was something we always enjoyed together. I like to think that Nan was there watching alongside us in spirit.
I recently read Dear Dolly, a collection of columns from the Sunday Times Style agony aunt, Dolly Alderton. I’ve found solace and warmth in her writing for years, but one particular sentence in this book impacted me hard: “Grief is an electric shock that tells us we are fully alive — it means we’re connecting and creating and caring.” Those thoughtful words tenderly reminded me of the privilege to have enormously loved someone, and that sadness and discomfort serve as valid feelings when love has been so central.
We all grieve in different ways, I’ve learned. My grief is hard-hitting, all-consuming stabs of pain, but for my Mum, it’s the subtle sting she feels during mundane tasks like setting the dinner table only for two. I wonder if it will ever get easier. Then, I overwhelm myself thinking about the first birthday, the first Christmas, the first Mother’s Day, without her. Those milestones may be the toughest part to come.
