Pick up that baton and run

It's been a funny ole month at Sophington Towers, not so much births, deaths and marriages but certainly birthdays and a death, which frankly is enough for any one month to deal with. But in the end one death and a birthday certainly seem apt, if for nothing apart from reflecting a circle of life.

Me: Nan, let's take a selfie
Nan: Who are those two eejits on your phone?

The birthday was my own, and while that's not much to sing about, after all it's just a year, but the death? The death got me in the kicker, for you see the death was none other than my very fabulous last grandparent standing. It was my nan, she of the knitting needles, amusing misunderstandings of selfies and 'a bell on every tooth'. Regular readers of my errant witterings will have heard of her before, she was a big feature in my life . And I guess it was only in her passing I realised just how powerful she was.

You see, my nan was a very unassuming woman. She had a hard bloody life. She was not so much blessed with, as had dumped upon her a whole heap of troubles, not limited to a pretty crappy husband, list of health conditions as long as your arm (& then some) and a life of struggles. But my nan, strengthened by her faith in both in the big man upstairs and in humanity as a whole, well my nan did good. She raised 2 very strong daughters and she never let her problems conquer her indomitable spirit, or indeed sense of humour. She was a good woman, and it is on this good womanship & family that I wish to ponder.

Nan and her two girls

Raising two children as essentially a single mother must be hard for any woman, let alone one beset by struggles in a time when it must have been very hard to be a single mum. But she did it, and as I was sitting there at her hospital bed that I realised it was in her death that this hard work had completed it's circle. Unless you've been there, you've no idea how hard it is to watch someone you adore die. And not to die quietly, not quickly, not peacefully, but when every breath is a struggle, a fight not to let go. Witnessing that in itself takes strength. Strength to comfort your grandmother when you know she won't be around much longer, strength to, on doctors orders, deny her that small cup of tea she was begging for (she always took pleasure in the smallest things in life, from a nice cup of tea to the glorious bloom of one of her pot plants). Strength to hold her wee little hand feeling it weaken day by day just wishing she could steal some of yours to last that little bit longer. Strength to come to terms with important medical decisions that you know are for the best but you dread nonetheless, and perhaps most importantly, strength to hold up your mum in a time when her pain must've been so much more than your own.

First day of 'Big School'

As we family sat around her bedside (& not just women I hasten to add, but also my cousin Daniel who I don't think knew it, but was like some kind of bastion of manhood in my eyes, showing more public courage and fortitude than I've seen in a guy of any age. Proof indeed ladies, there are great men out there), I felt this overwhelming sense of femininity. A baton of womanhood was being passed from one generation to the next. My nan, she'd cared for me as a little un, held my hand as I was taking my first tottering steps into this big bad world of ours, wiped my ass and changed my nappies, babysat me, stood proudly next to me on my first day of 'big school', made tears turn into smiles and as I grew, those smiles turned into guffaws with her, chuckling at the oddities of life. And it was only in her passing did I realise that that baton of care, well it was my turn to pick it up now. My turn to run with the great woman genes, powering from one generation to the next, it was my turn to take care, but this time it was to take care of my mum as she was saying goodbye to hers. It was my job as a daughter to channel some of my nan's strength that she'd displayed (with very little grumbling) all her life, it was my job to stand up be counted and to hold up my mum, cos she needed some of that strength I couldn't impart to my nan. And as much as I might've wanted to run away at some points (and boy did I) I didn't. That's my baton of care, it's Nan's baton of strength and I will always carry that with me.

Nan strangling in action

I had always thought the big indicator of adulthood was getting a mortgage (well, having children has never seemed on my radar so a mortgage is just as long term and probably just as expensive!). When I become a home owner I'll be a grown up I thought. That'll make me a proper, card carrying, fully fledged adult I thought. HA! How wrong was I? On the day my flat completed I had no sense of achievement, no sense of overnight maturity. No siree, all I had was a monthly payment plan and a sense of deflation, let down by an absence of something that was entirely of my own imagining. But of late I've realised just how ludicrous that seems. It's not a milestone, a 21^st birthday card, a key to the door, a mortgage agreement or any other arbitrary markers in the sand that brings you from youth to maturity. It's these moments. These moments of life that you look can look back upon, pointing to saying 'THAT was a moment that changed me'. And it has.

You see, my mum called me strong last week and for all my oft repeated defence that I'm not really all that strong, I've just had a lot of shit thrown at me, perhaps she's got a point. Perhaps that's my nan's unwritten legacy to the women of her family, her baton of care, her baton of strength, her example of picking yourself up, dusting yourself off, having a chuckle at yourself and carrying on. And I have to say, as I'm facing the rest of the year newly single & with all of the challenges that life inevitably hurls at you, as legacies go, it's not a bad one. Thanks Nan. I owe you one. xx