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Saying My
Goodbyes When I visited my grandmother in nursing homes and hospitals in the last years of her life, I would talk with her about things that were still clear in her mind—politics, theatre, her childhood and young adulthood, how she met my grandfather and the times when my father and uncle were young. I always got stuck, though, when we reached a certain point. I could empathise with her going to university, then moving to London alone at the age of 20 in 1933, getting a job, going to tea dances, movies and theater. I could understand why she kept her maiden name for a while after marrying, lying to her boss so she wouldn't lose her job (it was a good job; she was personal assistant to a major industrialist). But at the point where her happiest memories began, I couldn't share her pleasure in them. She would talk about giving up work and raising her two sons, her academic ambitions for her sons, and the pride she took in their achievements. I would smile and look at the photographs, but I would think—are you crazy, woman? You're so intelligent, you have so many interests of your own. You could have acted, studied literature, or been successful in business or politics. But you gave it all up for this. Where were you ? Where were your desires and ambitions? Can these be wholly happy memories? I would try to find some resentment in her at the loss of other lives, lives that had been at the end of paths she never followed, never chose to follow. 
My grandmother with my sister My grandmother died recently, and I was asked to read the poem reprinted below at her funeral. This poem was found in the mid-eighties by a nurse who was going through the belongings of an old woman who had died in Ashludie Hospital, near Dundee. This old woman did sound like my grandmother, but I had to find a way to celebrate a life I would never have chosen to live. Three days before her funeral I sat with my grandmother’s body in the chapel of rest and read through the poem again and again. There are no traces of resentment in this poem at choices limited, regret at other lives not lived. The woman who wrote this poem saw her life as a whole, and - for her - it had all the right things in it. Perhaps seeing your life that way is a gift of old age; perhaps one day I'll come to accept that I couldn't have taken every path. Perhaps all I can see is a life lacking something. But I sat in the chapel of rest and tried to understand. I'm still struggling to accept that they were happy memories, and part of my struggle is to understand women of my generation who make different choices from me. I know things were very different in Britain in the 1940s. But my grandmother was strong, independent and intelligent; if anyone could have fought back it would have been her. In the end I did read the poem at her funeral. This poem is, in some ways, very appropriate for my grandmother; she was terrible at being old, and sometimes wouldn't cooperate with the nurses who were trying to help her. And she did have just these sorts of happy memories. But did she choose her path freely? I don't think I'll ever be sure. |
Are you thinking, when you're looking at me a crabbit old woman, not very wise, uncertain of habit, with far away eyes, who dribbles her food and makes no reply when you say, in a loud voice, "I do wish you'd try!" Who seems not to notice the things that you do and forever is losing a stocking or shoe. Who, unresisting or not, lets you do as you will, with bathing and feeding the long day to fill.
Is that what you're thinking? Is that what you see?
I'm a small child of ten with a father and mother,
Dark days are upon me, my husband is dead,
So open your eyes, nurses, open and see |
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My father wrote this to me after reading my piece. It added to my understanding of my grandmother and made me see that there were effects on my father. It's made me realize how people leave echoes of themselves through the generations. "I've been thinking about the poem, because of course it doesn't actually convey Granny's biography accurately, though in general terms it is right about her old age. Granny was a much more complicated person than this old woman! She did decide, I think, once she had made her rebellion and proved successful at working in London (the great big bad city which her father hated!), that she wanted to have a family, that she wanted a man who did value her, and that she wanted children, especially one or more sons who could be what she had never been for her own father (she used to put it that way herself). But I'm afraid I think that in some ways she remained a bit dissatisfied, or at least even when I was little I felt that she was and that she was expecting an awful lot from her sons. She sometimes behaved as if life had cheated her in some way, especially of course in old age. Grandpa supported her pretty well when he was still alive, of course, but she really lost her moorings when he died. So probably you are right to be puzzled, and perhaps she was more like you than appears at first sight. Although women today no longer have to dissemble about marriage, as Granny did, it still remains genuinely very difficult to combine a family with a professional job. I don't know what resolution you will find to this dilemma, but just hope to be able to support you whatever you decide and whatever happens!" |