A Sort of Eulogy

My gran died on Tuesday 10th of December, and today we laid her to rest. My mum asked me to write a few words to say at her funeral but the whole thing ran over, meaning I didn’t get a chance to say what it was I wanted to say. So for the benefit of my family, and perhaps friends too, here it is. I was going to close with W.S. Merwin’s excellent poem “Good Night”, which I may well save for another post.

I love my nana. My old granny. She never seemed to age. Always with white hair, glasses and a slight stoop. My lasting memories of her will be like series of Polaroid photos, one after the other, as she pottered around her house. Always asking if I wanted food, always palming me a fiver or a tenner when we were sitting alone, always ready to make you laugh when you least expected it, be it through an anecdote from her life, or simply as a reaction to her rousing, infectious, whooping laugh.

Sitting alone with my nana was something I cherished. It’s strange, as time went on I felt like my life was oddly dull. I never had much new to tell her from week to week, yet she smiled all the same. And moaned. She did love a good moan. I always knew she was actually feeling alright when she was moaning about something – the state of the roads, David Cameron and the Tories, the lack of jobs, the state of Noel Edmunds’ beard, how there was never any good news anymore… there was always something. And it was always funny.

I feel it’s somewhat fitting that a lot of my memories of her are of her at home because she was very house proud. It was never in a snooty way though. For example, from when I was a wee guy up until what must have been about ten or so years ago, she had the same old horrific 70s carpet in the hall and up the stairs. It was pretty dreadful, a strange frayed mix of black and red and yellow which had been worn over many years by many different feet. It was positively terrible. The day that was replaced with the carpet which is in her house now, she told me that it was something she had always wanted to do. Such a simple thing that made her happy. House proud she was. And then followed the new kitchen, bathroom, TVs, appliances and whatnot. Most of my memories are of my gran being at home. Not house bound, just in the place that she made her own over many many years.

Memories are funny things. They bend and warp over time, yet nana was always on hand to regale anyone with a story from her youth. She loved film, you see, and she would often speak of the jaunts she’d take every week to one of the cinemas in Shawlands, those which no longer exist, to watch the biggest stars of her day. She once told me a story about how she took her brother Alfie to the cinema with her, and all she wanted to do after the film had finished was sit and watch it again, but he started crying and she managed to pacify him by giving him the chewing out of her own mouth to stop him crying. Sometimes she’d go even further back to when she was a child in Govan. That’s when we knew the stories were going to be laden with either laughter or songs, often both. I’ll miss that laugh and I’ll miss those stories.

We all worry that when we go, we go alone. I can tell you that she did not go alone; she was surrounded by those she loved. If one could be so bold as to measure a life, then the best measurement I can think of is by counting how many lives one has touched. As I look out here today, I can see the many lives that she’s touched and I think that’s some pretty good going. The stories that we all have, those snapshots, the intimate portraits of a woman we all loved, those too are a measure of how much my nana touched our lives and how her light has, in part, been passed on to us. And perhaps one day we too will regale our kids, grandkids, friends and maybe even strangers, with the stories, with the memories, we have of a funny and kind hearted woman. A wonderful light has gone from our lives, and the world has become slightly darker. It’s up to us to make sure that the light she left with us burns for many years to come.