Death, Life, Birth

I’ve had a very emotionally challenging month or so. Lots of things, but most significantly because I lost two close family members almost in succession.

My parents both come from big, Catholic families and there was a death on each side. The ripple effects reached everyone I love and were fairly major losses for both my mum and dad.

My mum is the oldest of a huge family. The brother who passed was the first of the siblings to go but roughly in the middle by birth order. Instantly I knew that his death would bring an extra level of pain for his older siblings. We do tend to place a lot of focus on the idea of ‘natural order,’ although of course Catholics believe we were never meant to die, God meant us to live forever. But we also believe in eternal life after death, and while faith is a challenge in this day and age, that one teaching at least brings comfort.

Two days after the news of his death - less when you consider time of day - it was the funeral of my high school best friend’s mother. June was an amazing woman who radiated happiness and love. Knowing she’d gone too soon wasn’t easy, but harder was the thought of the pain her death would bring to my friend, and her family that had grown in number since we first knew each other. I now lived in a different city, and work meant that I couldn’t travel home for the funeral, but I was able to join online. Not only did the ceremony bring some comfort around June’s passing, but I found the timing in relation to losing my uncle gave some comfort there too.

I was grateful for my faith then and there. Although lapsed, we never really stop being Catholics. Or maybe the other way to look at it is, we never really lose faith. I was struck by how great this priest, who hadn’t been with the Parish when I attended, was and how impassioned his delivery had been. I suppose he wasn’t saying anything other priests hadn’t or wouldn’t have said, but just as some nurses or teachers were obviously called to their vocation, so clearly was Father Joe. He eased the grief I was feeling and reignited some faith in me. Just in time too, as my uncle would have a Catholic service. It means more when you’re in touch with your religion (not a word I like, but I’ve used faith too many times already) than it does when you are on the outs.

I was due to finish up soon in the job I was doing, having a new one lined up in a month’s time. After June’s funeral I realised I wanted to be home and near my family. We knew my uncle didn’t have long days before he finally submitted. It was extremely difficult to be in another city, another country in fact, away from family, while we went through this. An early departure was negotiated, and I returned to Scotland not yet knowing when the funeral would be.

I also didn’t know how unwell my paternal grandmother had become. Her health had been declining for years – in and out of hospital, having to get her council house adapted. But she was 89 and had worked hard all her life. It did seem she was a woman of such fortitude that she would be around for a while to come, albeit needing extra support. As it turned out she was actually now quite weak and disoriented, and doctors had said she would go soon.

We saw a lot of my granny when we were young. As I grew up and found myself very busy in life, I didn’t keep in touch with her: another symptom of feeling someone was always going to be around. It could even have been years since I’d seen her. When my aunt called to tell me the stage her illness had reached, I drove over that day. I felt lucky I’d decided to come home between jobs, or I wouldn’t have been able to see her before she died.

She was fairly unresponsive and had no idea I was there. She had a hospital bed at home. It was a bit of a shock, but I guess I was somewhat prepared for it. I messaged daily to find out how she was doing and on the following Sunday, the same weekday exactly two weeks after my uncle died, I got word around lunchtime that she’d gone.

I abandoned my plans for the day and went straight to the house. It was hours before her children were finally ready to ring the undertakers, and I stayed with her and my family until they came to take her body from the house.

Uncle Kevin’s funeral was a week later. It was a perfect send off. My mum had written some lovely words which the priest read, and as always happens at these events, we shared stories of him and I learned things I never knew about the uncle who was an artexer and who’d had, for as long as I could remember, a cute little tattoo of a mouse in a too big police uniform. I learned his nickname of Monkey had originated from a youth spent climbing and scaling any structure available. Kevin had always been the most daring and the most agile, swinging through trees and clearing high fences, like a monkey.

It was another couple of weeks before my Granny’s funeral took place, but still in good time for me to remain at home before the new job commenced. When the day came, I was uplifted to know that the same priest who’d officiated June’s funeral was performing my Granny’s. They did it a wee bit different in this parish, and my cousin went up to read a eulogy before the service started. It was beautiful and set the tone, especially his touching, self-penned poem.

When it came to what’s called the bidding prayers, Father Joe said “Now let’s pray for all who we have lost.” Suddenly I was overwhelmed, my emotions spilling over. It hit me like a tonne of bricks that this was my last grandparent, gone.

More than that, it hit me that I had not properly grieved the loss of the others.

My paternal grandfather had been the first to go in my lifetime. It’s fair to say that children often have a stronger bond with the mother’s side rather than dad's, but we had an added barrier of distance.

My mum and dad met in a nightclub in Glasgow. His hometown was on one side of the city, my mums on the other. When they married, my dad moved through to Lanarkshire. My mum already had a job there and my dad worked on the trains, travelling between stations as a relief clerk wherever he was needed. Provided he was near a train station, he could live there easier than she could in Renfrewshire. We visited dad’s side a few times a year and they always came to us for an occasion like a christening or communion. I have quite a few siblings myself, though not as many as my parents.

I guess my image of my grandad was almost a caricature of him. He’d been a farmer in Ireland; when he moved to Scotland he worked on the roads. He was a manual labourer, no airs and graces, somewhat of a gruff Irishman.

He was a smoker. Every night, someone would go out to the ice-cream van and buy him 40 Capstans – a brand so potent they are no longer sold; they were nicknamed coffin nails even before the true dangers of smoking were widely publicised. My grandad smoked so much that the wall beside his chair had to be redecorated annually, it had become so thick with tar from those cigarettes that lived on the top of the display cabinet, beside the pictures of each of my four aunts, looking angelic on their communion days.

His doctors had repeatedly told him his habit was wreaking havoc with his body, but he would not give up his smokes.

When I was ten (almost), we moved to Renfrewshire. Almost straight away, my granda had me up to the house to teach me how to make soda bread, and later gave me advice when I was learning to drive. One day, as he walked up the road, he felt a pain in his chest. He stopped to catch his breath, then carried on up the road. It turned out he’d had a heart attack. A heart attack: on his walk home from the town, only stopping for a breath before completing his journey.

It was then that he gave up smoking. Instead of packets of Capstans, he got through packets of polo mints at some rate. But at least these weren’t so bad for him. The heart attack also spurred him to return to his hometown, where he had been building a house. He went back to Ireland; my granny remained here but travelled over often to stay awhile.

I’m not sure how many years he’d been back in Ireland when he was diagnosed with leukaemia, or with the pneumonia that finally killed him. As the first grandchild on that side, I knew I had to make the journey to be there for the funeral. I wanted to be there for my dad.

My daughter travelled with me. She was less than 2 months old, and I was breastfeeding. I travelled by coach and sailed part way with her in a car seat. Other passengers were a great help getting on and off the ferry, someone always offering to carry my case while I got the pair of us to and from the coach safely. Then someone met us at the other end, and we were put up at my Granda’s sisters house – Auntie Bridie.

When my grandfather passed, I was too caught up in being a new mum to feel the impact. I just didn’t realise it.

It was nearly ten years later when my maternal grandfather died. Also a hard working man, I wouldn’t say I’d spent too much more time with him growing up, but he was definitely around more in the first decade of my life.

He was a legend in his hometown. Not just because he was the father of 17 children, but because he was a talented musician and performer. He had lots of charisma and even his own album, Live from London. My granda always told the girls in the family how beautiful there were, always had a joke to make us laugh or failing that he would pull up his trousers to reveal that he was wearing odd socks. Not just mismatched, but as different as they could be – one bright green, the other orange type of thing. I was never sure if his ‘life’s too short to match socks attitude’ was down to his humorous outlook on life or the fact that he had so many mouths to feed, he simply didn’t have time for the task. Being the character he was, he always sold it as humour.

At the time of his death, I now had two children, and the pressures of family life had taken a serious toll on my marriage. One bank holiday Monday, my husband arrived home late from a half day at work, having planned some family time in the afternoon. We had a furious row that turned out to be the end. It was four days after that that my grandfather passed. I wasn’t even able to talk to my mum about the fact that my husband had moved out. There was no way I was going to give her that stress alongside losing her father.

In the midst of a marriage break up, I didn’t grieve for my Granda as deeply as I should have. Added to that, he’d been hit by a car a few years previous and that was really when we lost him. He’d never been the same man since. It was the first time his daughters heard him swear. Rather than the compliments he’d always had for them, his dementia made him cranky and argumentative. I’m betting no-one on that side of the family properly grieved what was a basically a very extended period of loss.

I had never known my maternal grandmother, who had died before I was born. I had an image or idea of her from pictures I’d seen and the comments and stories about her through my life, but I never met her, not even as a baby.

Reflecting on my grandmother a year or so ago, I was able to say that I’d always felt her presence in my life growing up. I wasn’t her first grandchild, but I was her first born’s first born, which I guess made me significant. I know that as she aged, she told my mum not to make her life hard by having as many children as she’d had. It was cancer that killed her; a body that had been through less may have been able to fight. Although I didn’t have her, I’ve always been grateful for the massive family she provided for me. I never wished to change that, I don’t think she would have either. There’s almost a hundred of us now directly descended from her and my grandad – their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. At Kevin’s funeral we learned that there was now a great, great grandchild on the way. That’s some legacy to leave behind, even if you were gone too soon.

My reflection took place when I was doing counselling for my own traumas. The counsellor asked me about my mum and my mum’s mum. When I told her my granny had died while my mum was expecting me, she asked if I was aware that there was a whole school of thought on children experiencing trauma in utero. I was vaguely aware, but never did I connect it with my own circumstances. Suddenly so many things made sense. You can read someone else’s blog post about it here, including a little bit on Epigenetics, the study of how in utero trauma literally alters DNA. It certainly strikes a chord with me.

So as it turns out, I was around for the loss of all four grandparents, but for the first time I was in a place in my life to properly absorb and process the trauma. Then there was the impassioned celebrant who had a way of reaching you that was quite rare in my experience of Mass, and the perfectly worded bidding prayer. All my grief was unlocked by this combination of factors.

It was really difficult to maintain a level of composure that allowed the gathered mourners to keep the focus on the ceremony. I will have to unpack this trauma again and try to fully process it, as I had to somewhat contain it on a day that definitely was not about me. I’m not really sure yet how I go about doing that – it’s not like checking a book out of the library. But, if it happens of it’s own accord, before I figure out how to access it at will, I hope it’s at a time and place where I needn’t contain it. Please and thank you, if You are listening.