The Cattery

The Cattery

Grandmama Alberta-ta Victori-ah

20 May 2004
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This morning was my grandmother's funeral. She was "in her ninetieth year" - a euphemism for the less impressive-sounding 89 - and she died on Saturday night. For posterity, here is a somewhat edited version of my eulogy.

Grandma was the only grandmother I ever knew, and until I was four-and-a-half, I was her only grandchild. I knew she was Mine, and I can remember being quite surprised when I discovered that she had a Real Name, one that wasn't all about ME. We made a rhyme out of it: Grandma-ma Alberta-ta Victori-ah.

Every Easter and every Christmas, Grandmama and Grandpa would arrive in Mt Macedon in their green Sigma in time for the family lunch. Before Grandma had even set down her round red travelling case, she'd turn me around and press her back up against mine to see how much I'd grown, and how soon I'd overtake her. It was a cliche of grandparenthood and I pretended to be embarrased by it. But long past the time when there could be any pretence – when I was about 16, Grandma started shrinking much more enthusiastically than I ever grew, and the gap between us widened dramatically – the ritual persisted, with Grandma saying each time "Goodness, soon you'll be as tall as I am!" and me saying "Not quite Grandma - maybe next year."

I used to spend the night at Grandmama and Grandpa's house in Blackburn, sleeping in the room where dad slept when he was growing up, surrounded by boxes of fascinating stuff: dad's tin wind-up toys, wooden skittles, old magazines, and children's books. Grandma had kept everything - she was a proud recycler before the word even entered common usage - and there was always some new box of objects to explore. I'm struck now by the old-fashionedness of those things that she kept, which seem now to mark another gap between us, that grew us I grew: the gap of technology and progress. At some point, dad's old toys seemed much less interesting than they had, and I suspect grandma probably looked upon my Gameboy equally uninterestedly.

In the last five years of her life, both Grandma's short-term memory and her eyesight got worse and worse, and for the most part it was, for everyone around, both sad and frustrating. The Christmas ritual of comparing heights had a bit of an edge - perhaps Grandma didn't remember that I'd been taller than her for years? She was certainly very surprised that Huw, who for a long time hadn't entered the equation, suddenly towered over her.

But there was one wonderful situation a couple of years ago, in the midst of this sadness, that I've been dining out on ever since. I want to share it because it makes me laugh, and there should always been one or two laughs at a funeral.

Grandma loved music and dancing. I remember even when I was very little that she used to show me how she could still do the first five ballet positions. Two Christmases ago, mum and dad had just had the bathroom renovated, and dad realised that it would be difficult for Grandma to find her away around. He asked if I would help Grandma work things out.

So we went down to the bathroom, and while Grandma undressed I turned on the taps, getting pretty thoroughly drenched in all my clothes in the process. Grandma took to the shower with great glee, which makes me suspect that my own love of showers may be genetic, and when she finished I helped her out, and put her hand on the towel rail to help her balance while she dried herself.

Well, it must have been something about the towel rail that reminded Grandma of her ballet days, because she said to me, suddenly, dropping the towel, "Do you know, I still remember all my ballet positions - one and two and three and four and - " - acting them out, stark naked. "Go on, you follow along" she said, and I felt I had no excuse.

So I dutifully followed her lead, going up en pointe (as well as I was able, in my very un-pointy Birkenstocks), hoping that nobody was going to walk in and see us.

Unfortunately, one of the key features of Grandma's short-term memory loss was her tendency toward extreme repetitiveness: each telling of a story would trigger it off again in her mind, so that the end of the story would remind her of the beginning, and around we'd go again. And so it was in the bathroom that Christmas morning: each 5th position would contain within it the return to the first, a link made stronger, presumably, by ballet position drills when Grandma was a child. Some 25 minutes passed, with Grandma holding - barely touching, really, as a ballet teacher would demand - the towel rail with her right hand, while stretching her left arm above her head and around and down, her feet stretching and arching and me doing my best to imitate, first embarrassed, then bored, and then, finally, challenged: here was this 86 year old woman demonstrating strength and flexibility well beyond anything that I could muster at 23.

Grandma was everything that was wonderful about Grandmothers - warm cuddles, soft hands, special treats like pink wafer biscuits and mashed potato spread out on foil and grilled - but I find myself wishing now that I knew more about what she was like when she was twenty-five, before children or grandchildren, and I wonder what we would have had in common.

Views from the Floor

Sarah says:

That was really beautiful. Your Grandmama sounds like she was an amazing, beautiful person.

Khoi Vinh says:

That was very moving. It's sad to watch a loved one fade away, but you have wonderful memories to hold close for the rest of your life. It makes me realize how much I've missed being so far away from my grandmother, who is still in Viet Nam, for all of these years.

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