A place to remember them

How to write about someone you have loved all your life and who suddenly isn’t there anymore? And how to write about two people who had such a great impact on your life, and neither of them are here anymore? How to reconcile my suspicions about what happens after life with my desperate need to believe that something wonderful happens to us?

Twice now I have had the good fortune to have been called from Africa, by some unspoken feeling, to London where I found that a grandparent was dying. The first time I was crossing Mauritania and Morocco by land when I had the irresistible urge to keep going until London. When I got there, my grandpa Ken went into hospital, and died a few weeks later.

Just recently I went for my parents’ birthdays and while I was there, my granny Wendy, four months after losing her husband, followed him. It doesn’t sound enough to say that I loved them; those words are nothing compared to the excitement I would feel when I went to stay with them, or went to the cinema with them followed by smoked salmon and scrambled eggs in their flat. Or the great happiness I got from writing to them and knowing a letter would come from each of them, about the same things seen differently, two weeks later. I’m not sure I’ve even begun to process the fact that they’re not here anymore because it doesn’t seem possible, or right, that they’ll no longer be in my life.

Getting back to Dakar and finding a phone bill and nothing else in my post-box was a sad day. No familiar envelope with my name neatly-written, no saving it up until I was at home with a cup of coffee to really enjoy the two sides of concise prose on what films they had seen, who was doing what in the cricket, the state of the garden at their house in France, plus a reflection on the news I had given them, sometimes funny, sometimes politically-incorrect, but always supportive.

They seemed to find my news interesting, yet their lives were always packed with just as many adventures and stories. They were people I would be happy to hang out with, like I would friends my own age. Granny was always far better dressed than I, and always looked beautiful. Her hair was wonderfully thick and curly and she always wore beautiful jewellery. I used to look at her and think how lucky I was to have her as mine, my own Granny. Other people don’t have grannies like that, grannies are old and crotchety. Not mine, she was just incredibly sharp-witted and fun.

The last thing my grandpa said to me before I went off to Senegal, and it was the last thing he said to me before he got ill, was that whatever anybody said to me about my choice of life and job, he was incredibly proud of me and supported everything I was doing. I was leaving their flat at the time, it was October. He rolled up the sleeves of my jumper, and straightened my collar lovingly. “Yes, we love you” called granny from the kitchen. It is my lasting memory of those two happy people.

I wanted to write something about why these people were so special to me, but I’m not sure I’ve got very far. I feel so incredibly sad when I think about them because I miss them so much. I feel like there is all this stuff inside of me, represented by tears maybe, that needs to come out and not being there for my grandmother’s funeral has made it much harder to face the fact that she has gone. Everybody needs a place to remember the people they love and that place needs to be near. I live in Africa and I don’t have that place, and it has left a horrible hole in my heart.