I lost my Grandma many years ago. She was an amazing woman and I was very fond of her – I could often have conversations with her that I never could have with my parents or even my friends and she was always so ‘current’, with knowledge and views on a wide range of topics. We had gone out on that day for a walk around the local village, which was very close to the sea –  a lovely quaint old costal village, quite an old feel to it, but just starting to get infiltrated by younger generations (I remember the surf shop had recently opened its doors to young and not so young hip surfing types down, from the big city). It was a hot day so we took her sun brolly and meandered through the small housing estate down to the sea for the standard walk along the beach path before turning inwards and up through the main village street. She talked about how she missed our chats (I’d not been down for a year or more, and worse still, had not written) and as normal I said that it was bad, and that I would try much harder – a letter once I’d got home. That would do it. We turned inland and headed for home. I was thirsty by now so we stopped at the newsagents and I left Grandma on the old wooden bench outside (she was comfortable there as its where her friend picked her up to go shopping on Tuesday mornings) whilst I popped inside for a chilled beverage. I was in the shop for no more than 2 minutes. I stepped back outside and to my horror she had gone – the bench was empty. I’d lost my Grandma.

How would I explain this? Not to my Grandad and my parents as I was sure that I’d find her eventually, but to passers by and shopkeepers that I was going to have to ask in the next few minutes before I’d have to widen the search perimeter in the directions that I chose not to look in first;

“Excuse me, I seem to have misplaced my grandmother, I left her on the bench outside and now she’s gone”

The first person  I asked must have assumed that I’d lost her ashes as he sent me off in the direction of a poor young lady who’d just bought a rather nice blue vase. It was only after speaking to the ‘highly observant’ lady from the hairdressers over the road that I realised what had happened. Her friend (let’s call her Mrs Pavlov) had driven past, seen my Grandma sitting on the bench, assumed it was shopping day so driven her to the supermarket where she had a whale of a time stocking up on the same things she’d bought the day before.

Needless to say, my grandma passed away some years after that event which may or may not have actually happened.

I still miss her.

I still miss receiving letters from her and most of all – I miss being able to write letters to her. There was something about the act of taking a piece of writing paper with its stylish watermark on and thinking carefully about words to write to my elderly relative who had once been so close, but over time I’d grown apart from as my pace of life continued to accelerate as hers steadied, slowed and then faltered. In her later years I noticed that there was a small delay as she returned to her lively alert self, from the initial gaunt, rather vacant look on first seeing her after a gap. As time wore on and my visits grew more infrequent, the delays for this transformation took longer, and the change was less significant until finally she was admitted to a home and I stopped seeing her altogether. She died not long after being in the home – although for me, my Grandma had left some time before then.

I’ve wondered since what a difference it might have made had I continued to write and visit and I wonder now how many elderly people with amazing lives behind them and wonderful stories, just sit, and wait.

And wait.

Until eventually.

Their spirit leaves them

Leaving their physical self to slowly fade away in a home.

“Dear Grandma,

I hope you are keeping well and I hope Grandad is back to his old self – I do miss him so. I’m sorry its been such a long time since I last wrote, I’ve just been so busy………“