families and relationships | Not Just a Granny

Posts Tagged ‘families and relationships’

I’ve been away too long!

Posted in family and relationships, me and Peanut, Uncategorized, tagged a place to stay, being a granny, blogging, blogging about my life, families and relationships, family and relationships on May 30, 2023| 4 Comments »

Time is such a weird construct! It feels like yesterday I posted my previous blog, but it’s been
absolutely months!!! It doesn’t feel that long, and yet so much has happened in the past 9
months that I can hardly comprehend it.
Starting with current events; my daughter’s father passed away on Saturday 20th and although he and
I have not been in a relationship for over 43 years, his death has raised all sorts of emotions. My
daughter is absolutely exhausted with crying and feels bereft at his loss. There are so many
emotions it’s difficult to untangle them all. Sadness because she hasn’t had a very long or close
relationship with him since they first met in 1995. Sadness because he lived in South Africa and
for the last 20 years she has lived in the UK with only the occassional trip back to SA to visit.
Sadness because he will now miss all his grandson’s life events…like first day at school.
Frustration and a bit of anger because he chose to not have treatment when cancer was
diagnosed. Although she obviously respected his decision, it was frustrating because he chose
some quackery treatment instead of treatment that could have given him many more years….or
maybe not. And there is the sliding door. We just don’t know. The grief of losing a parent, even if
they’re not close. The sudden realisation that one of her parents has died…it’s the next level.
Grandparents die and then parents. That raises all manner of fears.

We had a replica Spanish Galleon visit our little harbour recently. It is just magnificent and I was
really sad to see it go. We boarded for a visit and loved exploring. My grandson was full of
questions about everything and took it all in.

Just over 3 weeks ago I camped out on The Mall for my first ever coronation. Not that I am a
supporter of Charlie and his ex-mistress, but I am a fan of the British pomp and pageantry that
they do so well. Oh my gosh, those bands and the horses. Amazing. And the coach was fabulous.
I’ll do a blog on this fab fab event at a later stage.

I have two additional ‘grandson’s in the form of new kittens that my daughter and family have
adopted!! They are just so cute! One is ginger and the other pitch black. They are so cuddly and
my human grandson just loves them to bits.

I have just come through what has to be the most unbearable winter I have ever experienced. I
moved into a new flat last year in April and had the pleasure of enjoying summer and my
garden….although that didn’t last too well in the summer heat last year and much of it was obliterated in
the heat. The only saving grace I had is that I work away as a live-in Carer for 2 weeks of every
month…somehow that helped me to cope… by God it was cold. I spent most days in bed with
the electric blanket on just to get warm! Some days it was so cold that I could see my breath
even though I was in bed with the electric blanket on! I would not have coped if not for the
government handout for those awful 6 months. My flat is semi-basement and has little to no
insulation.

My daughter and I were in the papers…not national news, but a small article about having a
‘cheap as chips’ (my expression, not the reporters!) funeral plan. I had recently (last year)
decided that when I die I do not want a fancy smancy funeral that costs thousands of £s.

But wanted the cheapest possible exit. So to that end I did some research and discovered the
cheapest plan; what they refer to as a direct plan, and coincidentally a reporter was looking for
people who had decided on that route to interview. So I contacted her and we got our/my story
into the papers. Frankly I’d much rather my daughter got as much of my money as what I have
left, than it goes to a funeral home for what? flowers and a fancy coffin, hymns etc etc…no they
can have a private memorial service/get together/knees up Mother Brown type affair afterwards
if they wish. But no funeral. I can’t imagine anything worse!

The Queen died last year in September. It threw me into a massive spiral of grief. I attended her
lying in state to say my good byes and attended her funeral. The Queue as it became known was
incredible. The spirit of goodwill was impressive and made the hours of standing bearable.
Entering the Great Hall and seeing her coffin on the dias was almost overwhelming; the
atmosphere was reverent and respectful. Camping out on The Mall for the funeral was just
extraordinary, and when her coffin came past you could have heard a pin drop it was so hushed.

I’ve semi-retired myself now LOL and try to not work more than 2 weeks of each month but it
does require quite a lot of sacrifice…. like no long distance walks or spontaneous trips away. But
the upside is that I get to spend a lot more time with my grandson, and when I’m home, I have
him for the day on Monday and Thursday. I take him to his activities, and once a month, I take him
for horse-riding lessons. He loves them…and is so very confident on the horse, it’s an absolute
delight to see.

I’ve finally started writing my memoirs. This in itself has raised all manner of emotions that I’m
grappling with. I think it’s going to be a fairly long-term project, but after the death of my
daughter’s father, I feel the need to hurry it up. So to that end I’ve been writing away like mad, and the last few days I’ve been compiling a list of all my favourite songs from when I was about 9 years old, till more recently.

I’ve travelled to some amazing places in the last year for work and added to my growing list of
Domesday Book places visited. I’ll have to write a few blogs about these places for sure. Some of
them are so beautiful. I also had the joy of working in Richmond for 2 weeks. Although the job
itself was quite challenging, being able to take a long walk through Kew Gardens and along the
banks of the Thames from Kew to Rochmond was blissful. I used to love walking that route when
my daughter and I lived in Richmond….many years ago.

I’ve now completed 26 Conqueror Challenges and am slowly working my way through another 3.
It’s been more of a challenge lately due to my flat….having a place to call home has been so
amazing that I can hardly tear myself away, and my walking has fallen by the wayside.

Talking of home; I’ve taught my grandson how to make pancakes LOL and now whenever he
spends the day at my place, we have to make pancakes. He is so proud of himself for
remembering all the equipment and all the ingredients. It’s such fun!

So yeah, life has been both eventful and normal. The years are flying by and I’m 2 years closer to
70 than I was last year. Going forward, I had been planning on walking the Portuguese Coastal Camino
for a 2nd time in September with one of my younger sisters.

But…it seems that she may not be able to do it after all….even though we’ve been planning it for the last 2 years. So we shall have
to wait and see.
If however we do not walk it, I’m going to do the South Downs Way instead. My grandson starts
school this year (dear God, he’s far too young) and life is going to change quite a lot when he is
on a Monday to Friday schedule. I’m definitely going to keep his school breaks for planning trips
and adventures and have already diarised the whole school year’s trips into my diary.

I have a new computer now and hopefully once I get all my photos sorted (over 5,500 still on my
phone LOL) I’ll start blogging in earnest again.
Sorry I’ve been away so long, I truly do not know where the days go! and some days I think my
father was right….time goes quicker the older you get. Is it maybe something to do with our
mortality? We are racing towards the end of our time on this planet, and as the years go by, you
start to realise that actually….the sands of time are running out.

So hi 👋 ☺️ I’ll see you again soon 🤞🤞🤞

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Sticks and stones may break my bones

Posted in family and relationships, tagged families and relationships, growing up in a tough world on December 5, 2020| 9 Comments »

But words will never harm me.

I was chatting to my daughter and grandson last night via WhatsApp video, always an absolute joy when I’m away. I miss them so much….

My daughter was telling me that she took him to the park in the afternoon which he loves.

There were some other children there, older than him by about a couple of years, playing with the bark and play pretending it was ice-cream.

My grandson (not yet 2 years old) trotted over and tried to make friends. He picked up some bark too and offered it to the little boy, who rejected it and dismissed him with a snarky comment 😔😔

His little face crumpled with disappointment and hurt. He wanted to join in and be friends. He’s such a sweet little soul and so generous.

My daughter related how her heart contracted with the pain of his rejection, the expression on his face.

And I knew exactly how she was feeling. My heart contracted with imagining how he felt and remembering how I used to feel when she was rejected at school and at any other time in her life. It pains me greatly to know that he’s going to go through these times as he grows up.

It reminded me of the little ditty my Mother taught me when I used to get bullied at school : ‘sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me’.

I recall chanting that ditty many times over the years, until my daughter some years ago said that actually it’s not true. Wounds from sticks and stones do heal in time and you tend to forget about them. But the words remain stuck in your head to go endlessly round and round, sometimes interminably as you grapple to make sense of why someone has said such hurtful things.

My heart ached for this little boy, just starting out on his journey through life and it brings tears to my eyes thinking about the painful times he is going to have to contend with.

I wish I could teach him how to not take the nasty things people say to heart, but I’m useless at that coz I’m still struggling with something my sister said to me at my daughter’s wedding nearly 3 years ago….

My daughter said she’s going to teach him to “not give a shit what people say”, but ultimately some barbs hit hard and go deep and the pain never goes away.

My grandson truly is a sweet, gentle, caring, generous little boy, and it pains me greatly to know that along his journey in life he too is going to feel the pain of nasty words. I do hope his Mummy can teach him how to not let them affect him too much.

To learn that “sticks and stones may break my bones, but I won’t let your words harm me”. To learn that words deliberately or carelessly directed at you are more about the person saying them than about you.

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31 Days of Gratitude – Day 6

Posted in family and relationships, gratitude, lifestyle, memories of days gone by, tagged 31 days of gratitude, families and relationships, mothers, mothers and daughters, parents who die too soon, remembering a parent, the love of a mother on December 6, 2017| 1 Comment »

31 Days of Gratitude and today I’m grateful with a full heart for the love of a good woman. Today would have been my Mother’s 86th birthday.

my Mother and daughter. taken 3 years before my Mom died.

I’m grateful that I was born of a strong woman with good genes. Although many of those genes passed me by (except her good looks of course 😉 ) some of those that managed to find a hold are my love of chocolate, curiosity and reading. My Mother was an amazing cook and baker. Her cheese scones were to die for.

I have wonderful memories of my Mother playing with us, taking us out into the snow in South Africa (a rare phenomenon where we lived then), her wicked sense of humour and her love for her children and grandchildren.

31 days of gratitude, the love of a good woman, love of a mother

My mother as a young woman, me with the dark hair (7) and my sister with blonde hair (4)

She was a brilliant seamstress and made us (4 daughters and 3 grand-daughters) some stunning outfits….she even made both my sister’s and my wedding dresses. She carried on creating gorgeous outfits for people long after we grew up. In fact she was in the middle of creating a stunning wedding dress for a client and an amazing wardrobe of clothes for a lady with dwarfism just before she had the strokes that killed her. Every tiny outfit she made was perfectly cut, styled and lined and fit like a glove. Sadly she didn’t get to finish those final outfits…..

She died at the age of 52, just 7 weeks or so before her 53rd birthday.

From her I learned to cook, to sew (unsuccessfully)…not because she was a bad teacher, but because I had no patience. She always loved her flowers and gardens wherever she lived; her particular favourite were yellow roses. She had green thumbs and fingers and could grow just about anything….her gardens were always an explosion of colour.

31 days of gratitude, the love of a good woman, a mothers love. remembering my mother

my daughter often sends me yellow roses – she knows how much I love them

I’m grateful that I had the time I did with her, albeit way too short and sometimes fraught with arguments….something you’re inevitably going to get with a house full of strong minded women.

I saw this posted on a friend’s timeline today and the words resonated with me because of course my mind is filled with thoughts of my Mother:

“None of us are getting out of here alive, so please stop treating yourself like and after thought. Eat the delicious food. Walk in the sunshine. Jump in the ocean. Say the truth that you’re carrying in your heart like hidden treasure. Be silly. Be kind. Be weird. There’s no time for anything else”. Anthony Hopkins.

Poignant and powerful words, especially today as my family and I remember the wonderful person who was our Mother and Grandmother who should have celebrated her 86th birthday today. As well as which, today, 3 people on my Facebook timeline; 2 friends and 1 family have posted about the loss of someone close to them. It brings to mind the refrain that we should live every moment with passion and joy. We have only one life, and we’re dead a heck of a lot longer than we’re alive.

My delightful daughter started a thread on the whatsapp family thread; asking what favourite things we remember about her? It’s been really interesting to see what memories each of us have of her….all varied and yet they carry a common thread…love for her family. I’ll list them here.

Things I remembered (amongst many others, but these sprang immediately to mind); her crazy sense of humour, macaroni cheese (I make that a lot – in fact my client is getting that for supper tonight LOL)

31 days of gratituee, learning to cook, preparing healthy meals

one of mine and my daughter’s favourite meals; macaroni cheese. a family favourite.

potato salad (I made one today for lunch in her honour), pea soup, her music tastes, the colour of her hair – burnished gold aka auburn and her eyes – green, her colourful flowing kaftans that she wore all the time, her love of reading – mostly spy thrillers, and her sewing skills.

Memories from other members of the family are; her laugh, her hugs, sense of humour, naughty streak, playing scrabble, love of properly made tea (yes, as my sister said: no guesses where I get that from LOL), love of travel, love of roses, she was a party animal, making Christmas puddings, her OTT Christmas decorating, fabulous birthday parties for her daughters and grandchildren, her love of plants…she had a jungle in her conservatory… and as my one sister said…..the list is endless.

My Mother wasn’t religious but she was a very spiritual person. I remember just a few weeks before she died, her brother who she hadn’t seen for some years, suddenly visited out the blue. I recall how she phoned both my sister and I to tell us about the visit and her chilling words stick in my mind even today “one of us is going to die”. We just didn’t know it would be her. She had a very strong bond with my paternal grandmother and often she would stop mid-sentence and say “Grandma’s in the room”. She could smell the lavender my Grandmother wore. I remember one time, a few years after my mother died, my sister was making an outfit for one of her daughters and got stuck with a particular section…after trying for ages to get it right she burst into tears and said “Mon, help me please!” And she did. The outfit came together.

My Mother had 4 daughters and she taught us so much.

And even though it wasn’t (she was a strict disciplinarian) and isn’t always a ‘bed of roses’, most of our memories are good. How blessed we were and how well she is remembered.

Today I am grateful for my Mother (I chose well) and the love of a good woman.

31 Days of Gratitude – Day 5

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