On Friday morning my Nana, my father's mother, passed away. She had been diagnosed with metastatic cancer (probably pancreatic) back in April. She had been in reasonable health until a few weeks ago, when she began to enter the terminal phase. On Thursday she was told that she would not return home from an already planned trip to a local hospice. She arrived in the hospice, and was settled into her bed. She closed her eyes, and now finally freed from all her responsibilities in this world - her house being the final one - she slipped away.
She was 81, and she had lived those 81 years. The last time I spoke to her she was mostly concerned to hear that I was recovering from my depression. Satisfied, we said our goodbyes for the final time.
She was 81, her family hailing from King's Lynn in Norfolk. Her father was in the Royal Navy, and grew up initially in Portsmouth. She remembered bombing scares from the original IRA - some things never change. She remembered the doodlebugs and V2 rockets of world war 2, and remembers one incident when she was working in a hospital and a doodlebug hit the children's wing. She served in the WRAC, and was in Singapore during the Malayasian Insurgency. She could be quite the party animal, not the demure little old lady she sometimes looked like. There were a group of them working together - the one is charge was the one somehow managed to have stayed out of trouble the longest. She said the position changed with some regularity!
On the ship back from Singapore she met my Grandad, and they were married on their return. In 1953 she gave birth to my father, and in due course to my uncles. In the following years she returned to work, long before being a working mother was fashionable. Indeed, she was earning more than my grandad, being the main breadwinner. While other women her generation and younger were complaining of lower pay she was out in the workingplace actively doing something about it. She was that kind of feminist, and had very little sympathy for the protesters who expected to achieve equality without earning it.
I knew most of this only in the last few years, for as a child you only know Nana to be someone who is fun to be with, someone to whom you go on holiday, who takes you on trips around London. I remember trips to the Tower, riding on the (then) new Docklands railway, to the museums, that formed a regular part of my summer. Yet someone always willing to put up with a constant questions, encouraging them, and what they led to. In more recent years we would spend hours discussing the various books we had just read.
She had a love of travelling, and did so right up to the final couple of years. This joined with her love of the Orient, and many of her books in her later years were concerning China, or SE Asia, or India. She had a particular interest in feminist issues in those nations and women's struggles, though also a greater interest in the overall culture. She would speak of the places she had served in fifty years ago, and the changes that had taken place. While we often disagreed with politics on books we would always find common ground. To my great delight she acquired from me a taste of Terry Pratchett, and she was also a fan of Harry Potter.
My greatest regret is that her health declined before I was able to take her to see a performance of Shakespeare in the Globe. It would have been her birthday present, but some things are just not meant to be.
It is typical of her that she has left very little for my father and uncles to do. Her funeral is all planned - date obviously notwithstanding - her records are as complete premortem as they can be. It was just like her to have approached her death with such practicality. But while she could be hard headed she could also be a lot of fun, there was always there the spirit of the girl in her teens and twenties who would get drunk of an evening, just like the youth of today.
While those of us who knew her loved her remember her, remember her spirit and good humour, she will not wholly die.
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