When I was 17, my Grandma was diagnosed with cancer and died only a few months later. And if you are wondering, how many stories are going to contain some reference to dead relatives, I urge you to browse substack for alternate material. Cause, a lot is my guess?
Anyhoo I was saying, dying Gramma. The thing is, my Grandma really made the most of her convalescence. She watched EVERY SINGLE Death Wish Movie. The one where he takes VENGEANCE, the other one where I think vengeance was also involved and so on ad infinitum or at least the catalogue of the late, great Charles Bronson’s work. She loved him. She loved watching him put down punks and hoodlums, )she didn’t know it was racist, what with being a small Welsh woman in the early 90’s). She just loved watching justice being served and if someone got a good old slap from a handsome, moustachioed fellow then so much the better.
My Gramma told me that one day she sat for hours just watching a little bird come and go. Pecking around, here and there; nothing spectacular and yet a miracle we see all around us. She told me it was the first time in her life, since childhood, that she could remember having time to simply sit and watch the world go by. She had grown up with 8 brothers and a father who worked in the coal mine and their clothes were washed by hand, put through a mangle, hung up to dry and ironed with a cast iron that heated on the fire.
My Gramma went on to train as a psychiatric nurse, so not exactly a loafing profession, nor was being a wife, mother and caregiver to elderly parents. As well as helping friends and neighbours when needed, also giving time and smiles to seemingly everyone in Gwent. Between the bus stop and my Grammas house it seemed as if she knew and greeted every soul we encountered, us trying not to slip on the 45 degree angle street (Wales is made up of Up Hill or Down Hill) and them puffing as they eyeballed the ascent ahead.
I don’t remember a time where my Gramma wasn’t carrying something, cooking or serving food to someone, making tea or working. She was always bustling and busy, moving and working, just like my Mum and, just like me. Women who get stuff done, women who work and commit and save and struggle. Women who, it would seem, don’t make it past 60.
I lost my Aunts, my Gramma and my own Mum before they made it to the end of their 50th decade. The cancers were different, but the end results were the same. Treatment, convalescence at home then hospice and then, they slipped through the veil and were gone. Leaving impossible gaping chasms behind them, unfillable holes of anger and sadness at what they should have had, what could have been.
Back to Gramma, a much calmer and wiser person than I perhaps. She talked about how lovely it was to sit and watch the bird, she told me about a story she wrote as a child about a Lost Penny, she won an award and I could see how that pride stayed with her decades, wars and worlds later. Like a found penny, she held the warmth of that success as she contemplated her life, or simply enjoyed the sight of Charles Bronson kicking some villains’ face in. Who could begrudge her?
Instead of begrudging what she didn’t have, Gramma was happy to lap up the ‘enjoyment’ that came with her condition. She was fussed over, looked after and loved, which is more than a lot can look forward to, that’s for darn sure. So as much as her loss was something I’m not sure my own Mum ever really recovered from, I learned to count my blessings in what ever form they come along in.
For the first time in about 2 decades I can rest during the summer months. The previous 12 years on the farm saw us working our hardest through the hottest months, while most sensible people are pulling up a lounger under an umbrella somewhere quiet, we were raising hundreds of meat birds, piglets, ducks, hens and cows. We were rotating pastures, planning schedules, working the farmers market and raising our kids; it was wonderful, it was exhausting, usually at the same time.
So I’m exploring what that time might look like for me, how I want to spend my hours of liberation. What stories might I write, what tales should I record? What might I make, grow, learn? But that urge to fill every hour is to be resisted, it is against my new rules of summer. I am on a regimen of enjoying each moment of potential bliss that comes my way, finding ways to turn cons into pros and going to the beach as often as I can.
Right now I’m sitting on my deck, under and umbrella. That’s right! I have patio furniture and damn it all but I’m going to use it! The gentler, much less humid and buggy climate in Nova Scotia suits me much more, so I’m lapping it up. Yes there is weird techno music and the screech of a saw chopping wood beneath me, as my husband and son make a deck for us. A deck! To sit on! In the shade!!!
Such unthinkable luxury is something I intend to glory, revel and roll around in, simply because I can. I have created a lifestyle my near ancestors can only dream of. I can write stories about and for my Gramma, stories she didn’t have the chance to tell. I can live and be happy and be grateful. Nothing wasted, no regrets.
Enjoy this well-earned new chapter xxx