Rest in Peace.


My favourite memory of you, Nanna May, is when I went to visit you in hospital about a year ago. I felt like a Very Bad Granddaughter and wanted desperately to make it up to you for not having been to visit in a while. So I asked you if there was anything I could do for you.






"Gosh, yes, there is actually," you replied.





"Yes?" I answered.





And you requested that I clean your teeth. A simple task. Of course I could do that, I told you, and I wondered how I would help you walk to the sink.





You moved your tongue around your mouth then, and popped your teeth out into your hand.





As you passed them to me I grumbled, "Well that makes it easier then."











Comments

  1. P9 December 2009 at 11:28

    It's amazing how comedy can even be found in sadness.

    I'm sorry for your loss though.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Laura Jane Williams9 December 2009 at 11:56

    Thank you P. I like to remember the good stuff- to celebrate. x

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous9 December 2009 at 12:26

    That was sweet. Funny as hell, but still sweet. I bet you miss her. I still miss mine and she died yonks ago.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Absolutely Write9 December 2009 at 12:32

    What a funny memory. My old piano teacher used to take her teeth out during my piano lesson - when the cup of tea arrived - and put them on the keyboard. I kid you not. Mind you, that was the 1970's and it didn't seem that unreasonable at the time.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Laura Jane Williams9 December 2009 at 12:53

    mrwriteon- I'm just glad she is in a better place now- a place with her own teeth, I like to think. x

    Absolutely Write- Well in 2000-and-something having somebody hand you their teeth is scary. It actually rendered me speechless. And I always have speech.x

    ReplyDelete
  6. PurestGreen9 December 2009 at 13:51

    I got to sit and peel apples with my grandmother when I visited in the autumn. I also remember massaging her feet once, to try to improve the circulation. Strange, tiny memories of our shared humanity.

    your writing is wonderful - the imagery is like a gift to the reader. Now following with glee.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Huw9 December 2009 at 14:21

    I hope she said "fangs for that" afterwards.

    ReplyDelete
  8. scarlethue9 December 2009 at 14:31

    It's good that you're able to remember the good and funny things about her, it makes the pain of losing them a bit easier. Just a tiny bit.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Laura Jane Williams9 December 2009 at 23:23

    PurestGreen- and I have glee for your following. Thank you for the compliment x

    Huw- I would have cried with shame had she. x

    Scarlethue- Yes. I take funny over heartbreak any day. Nanna did like to laugh. She was wicked. x

    ReplyDelete
  10. SAVanVleck10 December 2009 at 14:12

    She has a funny wicked twinkle in her eye. I bet you take after her.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Laura Jane Williams10 December 2009 at 15:13

    SAVanVleck- she was wicked. Such a good sport... x

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Everything looks better with my eyes open

An incomplete list of some things I call my 2017 achievements: - saw my first ballet, from the really cheap seats all the way at the back. - cleansed, toned and moisturised every morning, and every night. - bought furniture. - threw a really very good Christmas party. - refused to save the candles for best. - called my mother. - called my father. - interviewed a celebrity. - deleted Facebook. - stopped nannying. - maintained a relationship with the girls I used to nanny - and their mama. - took a month off. - bought £300-worth of sex toys all in one go. - went viral online for falling over. - said out loud that I want a baby. - received a case of wine. - got offered a horse and cart at the entrance to Soho Farmhouse. - went swimming in the ladies pond on the Heath when we had the heatwave. - went home for Easter. - went ginger, and on purpose. - hosted an event about mental health. - did my first lit fest. - took a day trip to Oxford. - saw Titanic at the Royal Albert Hall with a l...
Read more

Above my bed

Image
The metre-and-a-half wide frame has hung empty above my bed since July. I paid a man to hang it. I'd harboured, to begin with, reservations about how my feminism and my employment of somebody else to execute the job dovetailed awkwardly, but after I hit myself in the face with a hammer one night, not understanding the difference between a nail at 45 degrees into a diving wall and a drill with a spiral anchor into a brick wall, I decided the most feminist act would be, in fact, to use my hard-earned feminist money to feministly delegate somebody better qualified to help me out - who yes, just so happened to be a man. I have never looked back.  The room needed something above the bed - that's why I got the frame and had it hung - but I couldn't rush to fill it. It needed to be right. I didn't want a generic Ikea print: they can satisfy the dead area behind the door in the living room because that is a neutral space. Bedrooms - bedrooms must be ...
Read more

Your story is not ready for you to worry about yet

Image
I teach creative writing, and often what happens is that my students repeat my words back to me and I don't understand that it was me who said them first and it's a headfuck. I love teaching. I love communicating knowledge and I love using my skill with words to package information in a way that lands with the other person. I sort of took it upon myself, at the end of last year, to help one of the girls I used to nanny with her 11+ because I could so clearly identify where her boldest missteps were and part of me thought  maybe I am interfering too much  and then her mother cancelled her tutor and asked me to come over instead and you know what? She aced the exam and I know I played a part in that. After, when she called me to tell me how good she felt about what she'd done, I cried. She's working on a novel and she FaceTimed me on Easter Sunday from a walk on the Devon coast to show me some goat poo. That child reminds me to be love. Some people have comme...
Read more