Forget Me Not – a generation thing

My grandma is my best friend.

My grandma’s name is Mary Theresa.  She loves music and reading, and the colour pink.

Many years ago she fell in love with a handsome boy named Patrick and they travelled together from Ireland, across the seas to begin a new life together.  They had little money but they worked bloody hard and made a good honest home for themselves and their family.

My grandma is a nurse, through and through  – in the real traditional sense of the word.

She cares about people, she looks after people, and it is the very essence of who she is.  If you are ever poorly she is always there with warm drinks, comfort foods and a stroke of the hand.  No medicine needed -because the instant feeling of warmth covers over you like a blanket..

My grandma is a baker – a bloody fantastic baker.  Not a modern day, fancy, flirty cook who messes with things until they are ruined – but a wholesome, honest baker who uses love as her main ingredient.  Specialities to name but a few are her famous Apple pie, her Scones, those Trifles and the famous Chocolate cake that have been fought over many a time over the years.  No measuring or weighing, it is all second nature – a talent that you can’t really teach.

Everything my grandma is she gets from my great grandma, her own mother, who she held with such high regard.

Without a shadow of a doubt the hardest person for me to tell of my illness was my grandma.  How do you tell someone something that you think might upset them so much it could actually make them ill?

I should have known better .  My grandma is a nurse – through and through.

The woman isn’t the matriarch of our family without good reason.  She has lived through many years of hardship, and experienced many highs and lows.  When I told her on that day – she didn’t fall apart, she didn’t cry, she didn’t shake.  She listened, very carefully and then, when I had finished speaking she said;

‘If only it could have been me’.  ‘I have lived my life, it should have been me’.

Those words really took me aback – what a selfless and genuine reaction to such news.

The following months she did everything she could to help me through.  She leant me a library book that she had taken out in order to read more about what I was going through  & how to help.  She sent me cards after every, single, chemotherapy session -reminding me of how brave she thought I was & that I would get through no matter what because I was a ‘chip off the old block’.  She called me each week to check on the nausea & when I was able to visit her again she always asked about each part of my treatment and my progress.

Oh how hard to be so close to someone that you might very well lose one day.  Someone who has been the constant in your life the whole way through and helped bring you up to be the person that you are today.

– but also what an honour.

What an honour to know someone so well that they share your sense of humour, your likes & dislikes and they know you probably better than you know yourself.

A wise lady once said;

‘..people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.’

Well, if that is true there will be an awful lot of memories of this lady in years to come.  A mother, a grandmother, a true friend.

Four children, ten grandchildren, ten great grandchildren (and counting) and an awful lot of chocolate cake…

Mary Theresa.