I wrote this piece a few weeks ago and it’s not food related but goes a small way in to showing what has spurred me on to follow my dreams in France.
On my top lip, I have a scar from falling off a rocking horse when I was a little girl. It’s something that will never heal, it would have done so by now after all. My other scar isn’t quite so visible: it’s not located in such a prominent and public position and it’s perhaps not even a scar, more a wound that is prone to opening at the most bizarre of times; it is called Grief.
Over two years ago, I lost my maternal grandparents within six weeks of each other. For me, they were everything. My grandfather was the embodiment of the perfect gentleman: patient, kind and loving. He was also a fantastic grandfather, teaching me so many things from the importance of love, to morse code, to the art of letter writing and all that comes in between. Grandma, on the other hand, was the ideal foil to the sensible nature of Grandad – she was a person who relished life, who truly lived, so to not have her around any more was not something I could fathom. She was hilariously funny, she was generous and she was larger than life itself.
My father’s parents died when I was very small and I recall a time, about three or four years after, double the age I was when they’d gone, curled up in the corner of my kitchen crying. This would happen at intervals throughout my childhood. I cried not because I missed them for I could not truly remember having them around, but I cried because I never got to know them personally, hear their life stories from their own lips.
I grew up, therefore, under the watchful and loving eyes of one set of grandparents and they meant the world to me. We were lucky to spend every Sunday together. Christmas always really started when they rang the doorbell, slightly groggy from their insistence of going to midnight mass, but beaming and radiating a love that only grandparents really nail. The seasons all brought their own traditions and the years rolled past collating a heartful of memories that all appear to bask in a golden glow. Growing up with them around, I never considered a time when they wouldn’t be there. How could people so central to your life leave it? It was never an option that appeared logical to me.
At the age of sixteen, sitting on my windowsill in my bedroom, their mortality dawned on me. My grandma, banished to the top of the garden to have her after-dinner cigarette, was on the ground. She’d fallen over, it was nothing serious, but rushing down the stairs to go and help her, I realised she wouldn’t always be there. This was also the start of her dementia which, in many ways, is a disease that forces you to grieve whilst that person is still with us, in body at least.
The mortality of Grandma and Grandad became a reality at that point. No longer would they travel the world together seeing the Great Wall of China, playing cricket in Sri Lanka or riding camels in Egypt. They stopped playing golf, windsurfing, flying aeroplanes. Grandma retracted back to that second childhood courtesy of her dementia and Grandad kept all their memories safe and showed an incredible display of strength in the face of losing his true love, that girl Freda who’d been his blind date 65 years previously.
It was the 2012 Olympics when, out of nowhere, Grandad became weaker. He’d always been so strong and so with-it that, in spite of his 89 years, it was a shock. A few days before he passed away, he had a sudden surge of energy and I made the most of it with him in his armchair, the french doors open and me sitting beside him.The weather was warm, the buzz in London was humming in the background on the television. I got the toy suitcase filled with a mismatch of assorted sized black and white photographs and vowed to look through them one last time with him. It was a ritual we’d do together every so often that I’d never envisaged a final time. The next day, he was back in his bed, drifting in and out of sleep. I rested my head on his shoulder and held his hand. I can still feel the soft, paper-like texture of his aged skin now.
He passed away a few days afterwards taking all the memories of his life, of his life with Grandma, but he lived a wonderful life. Grandma was left behind. It appeared to be the best order: Grandad could have never lived without Grandma but the upside of Grandma’s dementia was that it meant she couldn’t really fathom her loss, or so we thought.
Five weeks afterwards, Grandma’s doctor and carers said that Grandma was strong, she could be with us for another two years or so. She had never been told of Grandad’s passing in case she could understand but not vocalise her loss – she communicated solely by whistles and popping her mouth. That Friday, I sat at my desk at work and my phone rang like it had done 6 weeks previously. “You need to come now, Grandma’s dying.” The words didn’t sink in, they floated on the air, they lingered but they didn’t penetrate. It couldn’t be true.
The drive across town was the slowest of my life: tractors blocked the route, every traffic light turned to red and all the Sunday drivers had got their days mixed up. I ran out the car, I dashed along the corridor and I collapsed by the side of her bed. I kissed her, I thought I’d made it. I thought I could see her chest rise and fall, I thought I could feel her there but she’d already gone. My heart screamed just like it had done a few weeks before; I let out an almost primal noise but no matter what I did, it didn’t bring her back.
Until the funeral director could come to the home, we sat in her silent presence. Looking across to her bed, I saw a smile on her face. Grief makes you more attuned to the spiritual, and I felt that she was reunited with Grandad. Why else would she have gone so soon after? Her dementia had meant we had believed she was not aware of what was going on but her passing had a silver lining of sorts, it made us realise that she knew more than we realised.
A day or so afterwards, my mother and I looked out of the window at home and on an arch covered with roses, two doves sat on the metallic curve and stayed, locked in their gaze with us, for a couple of minutes then took flight. We’d not seen them before and we haven’t seen them since. I like to think of it as a sign that they were together again.
Over two years have passed without them around and it hardly seems possible. I will be struck by the emptiness of a life without them at the oddest moments but from my weakness is this regard, I’ve attempted to form in to strength. My grandparents taught me many things but one of their most important lessons was to live a life, not coast through it. For this reason, I’m attempting to realise my dreams in France, to make them proud. When I’m in the kitchen concocting baked goods, I have my Grandma by my side like she was throughout my childhood teaching me in the first instance. When I go jogging, my Grandad is spurring me on – I even have his old running jumper when it’s colder.
Grief is an odd thing and time doesn’t cure all wounds as people would like us to believe. A third Christmas without them is just about to get underway but, even after all those days, weeks and months that have passed, it still doesn’t feel the same. The scar of their passing remains and will never truly heal. I’m not alone in this. To all of you grieving freshly or otherwise, I hope there can be some comfort at this time of year – we have their memories in our hearts and it is here that the memory of those we loved and lost lives on.
the caped pâtissière 