My Grandma died today. As you can gather, she was 99 years old. I hadn't seen her in a few years, and it didn't sound like the last few years were very good. But she was a wonderful grandma to me. She moved down from Yorkshire to Somerset when I was about 8 or so and lived in the village about a mile and a half away. She was there to go to after school, or when I or my sister was sick, and she always had the best homemade shortbread. The first picture is her with the love of her life, Horace, me, and my sister. Oh, and Mitzi. That one's probably still in Yorkshire. The next one is just her and Horace (who also lived into his nineties, but died, it must be 27 years ago, because there was 20 years between them) in Wellington, I believe, in the house they moved into in Horace's final years. Then we see four generations of Cushing, in the garden of her house in Tiverton, and finally her gleefully encouraging Thomas, her great-grandson, to bounce on her bed (same house, following year).
She always encouraged me, and forgave me even after I asked her innocently (I was very little, I swear) why she had a mustache. (She told me later that she quietly went and had electrolysis - I felt awful.) Everyone should be lucky enough to have a Grandma like I had.
My Grandma died today. As you can gather, she was 99 years old. I hadn't seen her in a few years, and it didn't sound like the last few years were very good. But she was a wonderful grandma to me. She moved down from Yorkshire to Somerset when I was about 8 or so and lived in the village about a mile and a half away. She was there to go to after school, or when I or my sister was sick, and she always had the best homemade shortbread. The first picture is her with the love of her life, Horace, me, and my sister. Oh, and Mitzi. That one's probably still in Yorkshire. The next one is just her and Horace (who also lived into his nineties, but died, it must be 27 years ago, because there was 20 years between them) in Wellington, I believe, in the house they moved into in Horace's final years. Then we see four generations of Cushing, in the garden of her house in Tiverton, and finally her gleefully encouraging Thomas, her great-grandson, to bounce on her bed (same house, following year).
She always encouraged me, and forgave me even after I asked her innocently (I was very little, I swear) why she had a mustache. (She told me later that she quietly went and had electrolysis - I felt awful.) Everyone should be lucky enough to have a Grandma like I had.
3 comments:
Lovely tribute, Simon.
xM
She had a hard life. The best bit was, probably, looking after the children in Langford Budville after she retired ...
Funeral on August 11th
Further thought: looking through her things this afternoon I found a huge stack of printouts from The Family Flint. She must have been keeping tabs on you for years. Can't think how she got hold of them. If it was me I've forgotten ...
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