Grannies

(Yes, that title is an ode to Bluey.)

Before we begin, a content warning: This piece deals with bereavement, grief, grandmothers and mothers. If that feels like something you don’t want to deal with right now – or at all – please, skip it x

this isn’t my granny, because if it was, she’d have a cigarette in her hand | photo by Danie Franco on Unsplash

My granny died in 1996, at the age of 78. I only know the year because, when my sister Beatrice came back from Ireland a few months ago – a trip whose highlight, according to her children, was when the road to my parents’ house flooded so badly they had to wade through the knee-deep water in the pitch darkness – she brought with her a 1996 diary she’d found in her room.