The gift

I know it’s a blogging faux pas to blog about not blogging, so I won’t.  But I will say that I’m sorry for not writing more lately, I think this has been my longest hiatus in quite some time and one where I have had about a million blog posts in my head but neither the time nor the inclination to actually type them.

Since my last post we had some more bad news; my consultant rang to say that my lab results from the D&C showed I have had a molar pregnancy – more on this later.  So after I got over the shock and realised that I don’t actually have cancer, I had to be referred to Charing Cross hospital in London where they’ll keep a close eye on me and run regular tests to make sure everything is OK.  Thankfully the results have been normal so far and provided they stay that way there’s nothing to do except wait until August, when I will be allowed to conceive again.

Then on February 8, my beloved granny passed away.  She had a fall at home the day before my disastrous scan and spent nine weeks in hospital, during which time we all witnessed her suffering a slow and painful demise, punctuated only by brief moments of lucidity when we were buoyed up by a glimpse of the Granny we were so lucky to know and love all these years.

And that’s really what I wanted to write about.  You might think that the death of a grandmother has no real place on a ‘mommy blog’ but you’d be very wrong indeed.  You see my granny provided the blueprint for my mother, and in turn for me, when it came to being a mummy.  She was the centre of our family.

In fact, my granny was a lot of things in her 88 years, many of them before I was even born.  She was a daughter and a sister while she grew up in Donegal.  Later she was a nurse in Manchester and after that she was a farmer’s wife, a mother, a grandmother and with the birth of Bubs, a great-granny.  She was a baker of scones, a maker of jam, a bandager of sprained ankles, a hoarder of all things practical and sentimental.  She could crochet a dishcloth, upholster a chair, make a Christmas pudding and hand-rear a lamb, each with consummate ease.  Latterly her short term memory was failing, but she could remember word for word poems she had learned as a child.  She was a church-going woman; rarely drank and never cursed – but she had a wicked sense of humour and never missed a beat when it came to delivering witty one-liners.  She was stubborn and determined and fiercely independent, living alone in her own house until the very end.

She was a humble woman.  She would have been overwhelmed at the number of people who came to pay their respects after her death, and at the lovely things they said about her.   She was part of a generation where family ties are to be maintained and nurtured at all costs; when I saw how many cousins, nieces and nephews and beyond came to her funeral, some from many miles away, it made me sad that I don’t always share the same closeness with my extended family.  And yet even in death she brought us together over endless cups of tea and delicate finger sandwiches, reminding us that we are flesh and blood, cut from the same cloth.

Most of all my granny was a loving woman.  She had the heart of a lioness – huge and strong.  She loved us all through many a woe, from skinned knees in childhood to my father’s suicide.  She was always here.  She worried about us, commiserating and supporting in times of sadness and rejoicing in our successes and happiness.  That love was unconditional and consuming; I felt it from her, I feel it from my own mother.  It seeps into my bones, instilling in me a confidence and strength that’s impossible to express in words.  I am so proud that I gave her a great-grandson.  Her face would light up at the mere sight of him and even though he won’t remember her after a while, he, and the rest of us, will owe her a debt of gratitude for the wonderful family she gave to us all.  I hope she knew what an amazing gift it is.