My Nana

Yesterday would've been my Nana's 85th birthday. She died 10 years ago.

The last few years of her life were lost to Alzheimer's, a cruel illness that kills you from the inside out, until you are just a shell of the person you once were. I only saw her a handful of times whilst she was ill, but it was like visiting a different person; not necessarily a stranger, but certainly not the Nana I once knew.

But enough about the end of her life. My grandmother was an amazing woman, one I wish I could've known better. I was only 23 when she died, and still at University when she first became ill. I never really knew her as an adult. I feel some amount of guilt about this. My Grandad died in 1994, when my Nana was only 68, and she basically gave up on life. Living in Bootle, just outside Liverpool, the nearest of her 5 offspring was my Mum. My Mum was in A Bad Place when my Grandad died, not least of all because she'd just lost her beloved father, and consequently rarely visited Nana. Her other children lived in Edinburgh, Reading, Norwich and Toronto, all with lives of their own to go about, so Nana mostly spent her life after Grandad died in total solitude. She stopped going to Church, Bingo, the Library; all the mainstays of her life as a wife, rather than a widow, she let go of.

I was only 17 when this happened. Looking After Nana never really struck me as something I should take some responsibility for, and even after I went to University in Manchester, a short hop away from her, I never once visited her. I wrote to her; the letters I sent she kept in a little box of keepsakes under her bed, it was discovered when her house was packed up after she became too ill to live alone, but I never actually jumped on a train and went to keep her company.

I would give anything to be able to do this for her now. To take her to the shops, do her hoovering for her, go to the bingo with her (I would've had to draw the line at Mass though) just BE there for her. I wonder if a bit more company might've helped her keep her faculties that bit longer. But I can't undo what's done. I can but look back and regret, pointless as it is.

Anyway, enough about me. Back to my Nana. To me and my cousins, Nana was very much the Iron Lady of the family. Grandad was the daft, cuddly, let-you-get-away-with-murder one,  Nana was the tutting, eye-rolling, get-your-elbows-off-the-table one. Eeyore to Grandad's Tigger. She always seemed distant to me; unwilling or unable to ever really fully emotionally engage with people. When I learnt more about her past as I got older, that started to make sense, and in fact it makes even more sense now I'm a mother. Nana had her first child at the age of 22, and her last at the age of 34. During those 12 years, she was pregnant at least 9 times. 5 of those pregnancies resulted in my Aunt, Uncles and Mum. 1 resulted in a child who died at 12 hours old (a little girl called Norah) and the rest were late term miscarriages. I think she carried the sadness of those lost children with her to the end; well, almost to the end. In the last year or so before she died, Nana had reverted to an almost child-like persona. She would giggle, refuse to share the chocolates brought to her by visitors, and smile sweetly at anyone who made eye contact with her. Her speech was often quite hard to decipher at this point, but she never seemed... troubled, I guess is the word that best fits. There were moments, I'm told, of clarity for her, when she would cry and beg for help, and there is no doubt that there is little dignity in the horrible illness that consumed her, but the last time I ever saw her, her eyes lit up when her eyes met mine as I was leaving (even though she had no idea who I was) and she smiled a sweet smile, waving enthusiastically. I wish now I'd gone back and hugged her. Told her how much I loved her, but the moment passed, and a few weeks later, so did she.

In her younger years, she had been a singer. Just singing in the pubs around Bootle, but apparently she had an amazing voice, and was the sort of person who would light up any room; witty, vivacious and not to mention very beautiful to boot. I've seen photos of her, drink in one hand, cigarette in the other, laughing hysterically with groups of unknown friends/relatives/god knows who and you can just tell she was the life and soul of the party. She certainly had a wicked sense of humour,  was a master of sarcasm and dry wit, and I would've loved to have known her in her youth. Or even in her dotage. I never really knew her. Not properly. I miss her a lot.

Happy Birthday Nana x