It's no secret that my maternal Nana holds a very special part of heart. As I've blogged before, she was many things to many people, but to me she was everything I've always wanted to be (the neurotic bits aside).
As I get older, I realise the woman that she was. However, I still feel she is ever so close to me (even though it's been 6 years since she passed away). So I'll write about that week. I feel it needs to be done. And since I type quicker than I write, the blog shall be my medium and not my diary for once. Please, if you carry on reading, note that this is not a morbid writing nor a poking fun at one.
We got the call that she had... I don't want to say die but she did.. on the Monday. I come from a mother who puts the Drama into Queen and had always scoffed a bit at this. However, for the first time, I did a 'Mom' and as I took that call, my knees buckled, my legs gave way and I sank to the floor in a swoon that a Bronte sister would have been proud of. I knew the day was coming but it was still a shock. And then it passed and all of a sudden, I went into a very capable adult robot mode. I zoomed to my mother, I gave her solace and then I went to work. Within 48 hours I had secured and paid for our flights to South Africa. I took control. I organised lifts to and from Heathrow. I packed and made my son aware that for 6 days I would not see him (bearing in mind, I had never been away from him for more than 24 hours before) and we were off a few days later. We arrived in Cape Town and the sunshine blew me away. But we weren't there for a holiday, we were there for a funeral. Now this is a strange feeling. You're with family you've not seen for a long time so you have that reconnection but you also have the sadness that someone is missing, the common denominator of who you all are.
This is the bit where it all gets a bit surreal. As we were going through Nana's boxes that night, I can honestly say I have never laughed as much as I did then. We remembered her in every way. But instead of crying, we laughed.
The day of the funeral arrives. Now my Nana was a lady - she wore all white, she wasn't a traditional granny that everyone had - I lost count of how many times people assumed she was my mother and we are a family of all woman (CG is the first boy child in many a generation) so it would only be right that her funeral went as it did. She certainly had a hand in it. The hearse arrives.. it's a white BMW - not your normal hearse I can hear you say. The people doing it (undertakers?) hadn't been to that church before so they did not know about the almost vertical steps leading down to it. They had only brought a trolley and two men. In come the women of the family, we carried her down those stairs - my one aunt who is 6ft, me who is 5'1 and my other aunt who is in between and my mother who is now the Matriarch directing us all as she has done her whole life. You can imagine how we were giggling.
The church fills and I can only stress how good it was that we were in the front. As, like children, we giggled the whole way through. My mother actually snorted as she remembered Nana falling down the altar stairs of that very church. I did the eulogy (which currently resides on myspace I think) and that's when the tears started. Of course, this is also when all the old friends of my Nana who had shook my hand on entry to the church realised who I was. *After the service "Oh you're A, gosh you're grown up" I had thought it was obvious who I was.
I wanted to put this down because thinking of that day obviously makes me sad but also makes me realise; what an awesomely special family I am in.
I could go on about when we were at the cemetery, my aunts and mother were quite calm and it was me who sobbed like a baby and nearly fell in the grave. This was because, having conceded to wearing black, I refused to don black shoes and instead wore the prettiest, flimsiest high heeled sandals I owned - shoes that my Nana would have LOVED. These were my downfall as they sank into the sand and nearly caused me to topple headfirst onto my nana and granny.
The rest of the day was spent in the company of family and friends, having a braai put on by the very special Carol who could not have done more for us. We laughed and cried and remembered her taking the dog for a walk - bull terrier Bruce - he was boisterous, she was wearing white, he chased a cat, she slid behind him in the dust bowl that was our local park. None of us were there for that incident, but we can all picture it.
6 years down the line, I still miss her dreadfully - I can hear her say my name, I can also hear her say 'ooof' when she stumbled or did something funny - I've never met anyone else who says that. I can remember sitting on her kitchen floor watching her make all my favourite meals. And the one memory of her I have, that no one else does, is of being 10 years old and sitting in a traffic jam with her. We played silly games the whole 90 minutes (or longer). And I don't think she had played silly games like that with anyone. Of her taking me to see snow - slush on the side of a road. Was just one little lump of snow/ice but we travelled two hours to see it, and how we laughed. Me buying her yellow flowers (hideous things I think now I'm an adult) which she must have hated yet displayed quite proudly.
Okay, now this is getting quite morbid. but as it comes up to the anniversary of when she finally left us (honestly though, due to the dementia she actually left us long before that), I just felt I needed to do this.
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