4539 weeks

Trigger Warning: Grief , Death

I got a call on Tuesday last week. The voice on the other side of the phone was wavering and broken up. I knew straight away something was up, like I was already sensing a loss in the air. And so when the real words reached my right ear, my body didn’t perceive a shift to what it was feeling just before I heard the news. It was like I had known it all along that my nan had left her body that day.

Blame it on my semi constant anxiety, blame it on my recent consideration of how weirdly time passes when you’re an expat or simply the fact that I am quite attuned to the very small subtleties of my mom’s voice, but the already-sensing-something feeling in my body just expressed itself with a dull oh, okay. Then I proceeded to reassure my mum that nan was probably suffering less now than she had been in the last year or two. A constant subtle malfunctioning of her systems, always too weak to allow her to live a full elderly life, yet strong enough to make her pass her days in a coma-like state, from which she would wake up asking if she could go home. In fact, she was already home but all of her memories had blurred into one obfuscated concept of her being young and still living in Sardinia (which she hadn't since the 1950’s).

As I heard the news I decided to return home after visiting some friends and hopped on the first train back to Sheffield, knowing I had an hour and a bit to myself to dwell on my feelings and reflect on her life and our relationship.

Firstly, a permeated sense of guilt started pervading my body like a black cloud surrounding my lungs and my stomach. Why didn’t I cry? I wondered. I cry for bloody everything. I cry for the ads and the rom coms, I cry for dogs and the babies, why can’t I cry for my own nan’s death? Then a different part of my brain, to try and save me, started playing ping pong with my thoughts. A battle destined only to reveal more sense of guilt than ever before. She was old, and suffering. But my grandpa was also old and suffering and I still cried like a baby when I heard the news. She was very strict with you when you were a child. So was every other grandparent I had but I still cried for them. She was in pain. It didn’t feel like a relief knowing she had stopped suffering. It almost felt like NOTHING. Maybe you’re just heartless. Maybe I am. Maybe I am in shock. Or maybe it hasn’t registered yet.

How does anyone go from hearing three words over the phone to prepare for the physical absence of a person that has been there for your whole life? I am not naive anymore, I have certainly gotten closer to death as a part of life, and probably will continue to do from now on, and yet it still feels like a bit of a joke, really. We live our life fearing death so much that we never make peace with it. We lie to ourselves by omitting death as yet another natural part of life, avoiding to talk about it, to celebrate it properly, to experience it in both its beauty and its rawness. We don’t make choices for the ourselves of right now, we make choices for the ourselves of the future, what we think one day may happen if all goes well. Meaning, if we don’t die. But that thought, really, is just a temporary illusion because we are eventually destined not to be here anymore, at least not in this physical form made of bones and brains.

I gotta go back. Last time I didn’t go to a funeral, I felt like the doors never really closed. I felt like maybe one day, I would wake up and find out it was all a dream and my grandpa is still here and I am 13, and we are joking around as he was sneaking me little sips of white wine and telling my nan it was fizzy water. My arrangements despite quite desperate in a time scale, ended up being the simplest travel arrangements I had made in a while. I never before in my life booked a last minute flight for the day after without spending a fortune. Yet this time, the stars were clearly aligned and a £30 return trip ticket landed in my inbox. The most precious £30 I have ever spent I thought. Funny how little expenses don’t mean much to us anymore, like I could have easily thrown away £30 on a forgettable takeaway or a cheap piece of clothing hand-sewn by exploited children (yes, yes I know my dark humour is at its finest today). But right there and then, due to the emotionally invested situation, those tickets became the most precious of purchase, and it made me reflect on how much our perception of money can shift when we really tune into our values and desires.

The ceremony itself was a bit ‘catholic’ bland. A small group of us gathered, we cried together, we attended mass and that was it. Quite anticlimactic, I thought. When I die, I want to be made fun of, I want people to dance around a campfire or at least have a little boogie in my honour. But my nan was very religious, so religious that her persistent manners made it so that I was able to recite every single prayer of the mass; just by the memories of my childhood spending time praying before bed. Like a crazy Catholic praying vinyl has just been spun around the record player and I was simply the megaphone. This will make her happy, I then thought.

That day went away in a haze of tiredness and sadness and confusion. Still unsure with how I felt about it all, I started to brood over her 4539 weeks of life.

Born in Sardinia, my nan was sent away to work in Milan at a young age, potentially following a bit of a sex scandal that happened between her and her unmarried partner. When I say this and think how far we have come in terms of freedom of sexuality in Europe, I feel kinda of silly thinking this, but how daring and almost cool was my nan to disobey such a culturally imposing ‘no sex before marriage’ dogma. And as I type it I laugh at myself because, to me, my nan could not have been any more traditional in how she brought me up. No skin on show, hair perfectly tied away from the face, it’s not lady like to say no etc…

I don’t remember a lot of affection in the form of hugs, kisses and praise, but I remember so well until this day, her perfectly planned out ritual of dressing me in the morning, blowing hot air from the hairdryer into my freshly washed socks and tights, so that I could feel cozy when coming out of bed. She would knit for me these house socks with a double layer of wool threads at the bottom so that my feet wouldn’t get cold in the house.

She was a fierce seamstress, and as I was hitting my creative teenage period, I asked her to help me make a woollen coat for myself. Despite it looking quite ugly she happily attached and hemmed all of the sides of this random piece of fabric, so that it could look as close to a real coat as possible. And later in life, when I moved abroad, she found out I liked one of the jumper she made for me so she proceeded to make me another 3 all within 3 months. She used all the spare yarn in the house, and still managed to make them look wearable.

As I was browsing through some dusty photo albums, containing black and white pictures of her wedding, their holidays in Sardinia as a family, her living in Milan with her sisters and friends, I discovered pieces of information about my nan’s life that I would have never thought belonged to her. Or more so to the idea I had of her. This outdated idea of her that showed her antiquated, anti-fun, super-religious and so very not empowered (sorry nan if you’re reading this, somehow?!) vanished immediately. Now replaced by the eye-opening realisation that she was actually doing her best and even thriving at that, given the circumstances in which she grew up. Just like that, I started seeing her not as the old woman who taught me how to pray, but as a paladin of her own freedom; seeing the breakthroughs of other women in family, not as a departure from her life values, but rather a continuation of the work of empowerment. Each in their own way, with their own tools. My mum, evolving into an emotionally mature and super sensitive person that is in touch with her emotions and attuned to her feelings. My auntie, being an absolute boss and raising a daughter whilst also bringing home the bread for her family in a male-dominated industry. And I guess me, learning how to surpass the stereotypes of femininity, sexuality and beauty standards, by doing sports and training hard for them regardless of how they make me look, by loving people because of their soul and not their gender.

Perhaps, I dwell, we are all riding the waves created by the ripple of our female ancestors. Breaking free from the boundaries placed upon us by society, taking up space and teaching our daughters how to do the same.