May all who enter as guests, leave as friends: In memory of my Grandmother, by Jennah, 8.7.24
It’s a warm, bright day in the garden. Everything seems to have a warm glow about it – one of those days when the sky is a palette perfect blue, and fluffy clouds are casually dotted here and there as if to say, ‘we’re taking it easy too’. It certainly is a picture that is etched into my memory, painting one of the many moments that I treasure when thinking about my grandmother, Ivy.
I didn’t exactly know this then of course, I didn’t know that this particular scene would have such significance that I would recall it a few years later, with all it’s beautiful detail – because this now is a memory – but a significant one at that.
Sat comfy, cups of tea in hand and a smile on my Grandmother’s face, she looks at me and says she has been ‘diagnosed with a lung condition’ and in her lovely, articulate way she enunciated the words that would later come back to haunt all of us: Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis. IPF. She had been suffering with an annoying, lingering cough for some time and the doctors seemed to have finally gotten to the bottom of it.
‘Will it get worse?’, I asked. She said, ‘Maybe, they don’t really know’. We both agreed we were glad there was now an answer, and now it could be treated. And with a smile, and a drink of tea, that is the last of that memory, it then fades away.
We did that a lot – agreeing with each other. ‘Two peas in a pod’, she said – we could talk for England, for hours on end – about anything and everything, I loved her vivaciousness for life, her deep knowledge around pretty much, well, anything and everything. She was my champion, she truly was. Outside her home, there sits a plaque on the wall and it reads, ‘May all who enter as guests, leave as friends’ – and that is how it was with my Nanna. If you met her, you would become her friend – whether it was at the gym, at work, at the hairdressers or at the shops – full of life and joy.
Over time, I noticed our long conversations began to get shorter, phone calls cut short by the gasping for breath, the grabbing of the water bottle, coughing – ‘I’ll have to call you back, Jennah’, and then gone. ‘It’s her oxygen levels’ – ‘It’s her Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis’ – words long forgotten, back with a vengeance.
I dismissed it at first. Selfishly, I simply refused to believe, I didn’t want to believe, that this was happening – ‘What about inhalers, Nanna? Did you try them?’ – at the very start there were attempts to try almost anything to alleviate the struggles (alleviate, my Nanna would have liked that one, she had a penchant for beautiful, complex words) – but we quickly and regretfully learned that an oxygen tank would have to be introduced.
My Nanna loathed it. She loathed that she couldn’t move as she once did. She loathed that her independence was slowly whittling away. She loathed that there were no more holidays abroad to sunnier climes.
Still, she took her loathing and carried on regardless. With all her struggles, she still smiled, she still laughed, she sang, she cried, she spoke as much with me as she could manage, and on a good day she would go out shopping.
In March of 2024, after a long battle – my Nanna, my confidante, my friend breathed her last breath on earth – and I can assure you that she made the most of every single one of them: using it to spread joy, laughter, comfort, wisdom (and plenty of it too), courage and warmth. IPF – those ugly words that I heard my Nanna mutter only once on that beautiful sunny day, because it wasn’t worth her time, she valued the beauty of life and didn’t want to give any more of her breath to this condition than it had already planned to take…
My final memory of Nanna was on Mother’s Day, her last gift to me – another sunny memory – and no, it was indeed gloomy outside – but upon stepping into the doorway, passed that precious sign about guests and friends, there sat my friend with the warmest and happiest smile you could ever imagine.
Now I have this memory which is one of many that we shared together…our final goodbye – and this is what my Nanna has taught me even in her very last breaths, to choose to remember the good over the gloom: and we are sat there now, not hearing about this condition; we are sat there in the garden enjoying tea in the sun with a smile and with warmth in our hearts, forever.
In loving memory of Ivy Maria Jones, I love you forever.