I always thought my grandmother was one of the luckiest people I knew; she had an imperfect but loving husband who had never strayed and given her as much as he could give; she had a family, we may have had our episodes of grief and dissent, but we were hers and she was the hub around which we all revolved and returned to in times of trouble. She had a comfortable roof over her head and a holiday home for spending those endless, summer days in, no real financial worries and no major health issues. I thought she had it pretty good and I was glad of that. Our relationship became a little troubled as I grew older and our personalities clashed on a weekly basis, but she was my grandmother and I wanted all those nice things for her.
A few weeks after she died my mother and I spent a sad Wednesday sorting out her numerous belongings. I was putting some musty Mills & Boon books, the faded kind that only charity shops and old ladies ever seem to have, into a box when I noticed something sticking out from one of them. Pulling it out I realised it was a strip of photographs, the type you get from a photo booth. It was all at once familiar and strange to me, familiar because I had seen its kin many times in one of my grandmother’s photo albums; strange because I had never seen this particular strip before.
They had been taken one summer when my cousins and I had been staying with her alone in my grandparents’ holiday home. I can only have been six or seven years old at the time but I remembered the day clearly, how we’d spent the morning on the beach and then enjoyed a picnic, finally making our way home in the heat of the early afternoon. I had needed to use the bathroom with that well known urgency of youth and we’d stopped at the bowling green which had public toilets. My family had sat on the old wooden benches as they waited, the green paint cracked and peeling from years of remorseless battering from sea air and aged bottoms. One of my cousins, having the normal 30 second boredom threshold of an eight year old, had spotted the photo booth and wheedled and whined until my grandmother relented. And of course she treated us all equally so several minutes and a fair bit of spare change later we continued home, each proudly clutching a strip of photos in our sticky, sunkissed hands.
Every strip was essentially the same, only the grandchild differed, a permanent record of our childish posing and mugging for the camera, a mini contest to see who could pull the most ludicrously grotesque expression, whilst my grandmother sat indulgently patient, perched on the edge of the round, hard seat next to us. There were four of us and I’d seen all four sets of pictures, we’d spent several minutes laughing and teasing each other about them before discarding them for bigger, better amusements. Then my grandmother had neatly taped them into a photo album, briefly labelling them with the fact that it was summer and the year.
The strip I found tucked into the book was almost identical to the one my eldest cousin had carried home that day. There he was again, tall for his age, hair cut short, ready for the warmer months, handsome despite his facial contortions and with an ice cream stain on the front of his t-shirt that looked vaguely like South America. What was glaringly different about this strip of pictures lay in my grandmother’s face. The strip shows a young boy, lost in the carefree joys of summer and the last days of childhood as a middle-aged woman has an emotional meltdown right beside him. Shot by shot, her face crumples, overwhelmed by tears as she deflates down into herself, her misery perfectly captured in contrast to the blissful unawareness of the happy little gargoyle beside her.
Death of a loved one invariably brings guilt of some kind but seeing those pictures was like a kick in the gut. The pain of her sudden loss was still fresh but I had been steadily coming to grips with it because I had the comfort of knowing she’d had a good and happy life. But she didn’t look happy in those photos, she looked distraught and lost. And what seemed worst of all was that I hadn’t been aware of it at the time and had no clue as to what had upset her. I could remember the day with perfect clarity, right down to the memory of the way the air around me had smelt of sea-drenched sand, warm grass, sun lotion and stale urine barely disguised by the industrial disinfectant wafting out from those cool, shadowy toilets, yet I had no recollection of what must surely have been my grandmother’s rather obvious distress.
None of us were overly spoilt or selfish children and we truly loved our grandmother, we had spent more time with her than our own mothers, they having had little choice but to work in the absence of our irresponsible fathers. So how did we not see or pick up on how unhappy she was that day?
Why was she so upset? What had triggered this moment of wretchedness in this woman who had seemed to have it all? My grief and guilt demanded answers. Was she missing my grandfather who often had to work while we holidayed? Was she having one of those days all women experience at one time or another, where we wake up and inexplicably feel fat and frumpy and unsatisfactory in every sense? Or had she suddenly realised that somewhere along the way she had stopped being a woman with hopes and dreams and turned into being just somebody’s grandmother? She would have done anything for her family, but did some small part of her, a part she kept well hidden for ninety nine percent of the time, resent us for it? Faced with such an obvious display of our youth had she suddenly mourned the loss of her own? She had once been a pretty, petite brunette, full of life, feisty and spirited with a temper and dark eyes that flashed when she was angry. She’d had a mischievous streak and was frivolous, loved to sing and dance but had also dreamed of being a nurse one day, yet by the time she was 18 she was married and pregnant, all her choices seemingly made. When I stop and take time to think of her as somebody other than my grandmother I can see how she might have had regrets, and my heart aches.
Because the worst part is, of course, that it’s too late now, I’ll never know for sure what upset her that day and I’ll never be able to offer her comfort. As a child I was blind to her emotions and maybe, with hindsight, that was for the best, I think the six year old me would have just been confused and a little scared, more in need of comfort than able to give it. At that point in my life I still believed in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the total fortitude and infallibility of the adults around me. But I found that strip of photos as a grown woman with her own fears, including that of regret and I wanted nothing more than to give her hand, as familiar to me as my own, a gentle squeeze and to look her in the eye, just long enough for her to know that someone had really seen her for a few seconds and understood. Isn’t that what we all want most at some time in our lives? Just that one, sympathetic instance of recognition? Why should my grandmother have been any different?
Unsettled by the image of her distress I asked my eldest cousin whether he remembered that day, hoping he might know something I didn’t or unwittingly reveal the thing that would help me to understand, but he barely even remembered having the photos taken. I felt hurt on her behalf, disappointed and a little annoyed at him for having been right there and for remaining so oblivious to her suffering. But I didn’t tell him about the photos I’d found, he was mourning her too and it might have made him feel guilty, he didn’t deserve that, like me he was just a child at the time. I haven’t shown the pictures to anybody else either, I know that they would just upset my grandfather and mother, they loved her for much longer than I did and they have a greater need for happy memories.
Still, I can’t help but wonder why she kept those pictures. As she got older my grandmother increasingly hated the way she looked, even those of us who loved her dearly could not honestly say that time had been kind to her. Was that part of the problem? Her husband, actually only 4 months younger than her, visibly aged a lot slower, still looking like a man in his 50’s when he was well into his 70’s. He passed this ageless gene onto my mother who in turn gave it to me, our years barely show whilst time ravages the rest of the family, much to their obvious disgruntlement. My grandmother often bemoaned this fact, saying it was unfair, I always assumed she was joking but now I’m not so sure. From old photographs I know that by the time she was 40 she looked at least 10 years older, by 55 she had consciously stopped looking in mirrors. So why keep a reminder of herself in such an ugly moment? Had she hidden them away and then just forgotten to dispose of them later? Or had she left them there on purpose? She had felt obliged to hide her cares from us, shouldered the acceptance of having to deal with her misery alone and unspoken at the time, was it her hope that one day somebody who cared would see the evidence of her suffering and finally give her credit for being a human, with feelings and not just somebody’s wife/mother/grandmother?
I am at peace with my grandmother’s death now, although there’s not a day that passes when I don’t think of her and miss her for all kinds of reasons. It just took me a while to get there. The pictures didn’t help, they worried me for a time, I couldn’t get the thought out of my head that this woman, who had so often been the source of our comfort had had this moment, when all of her carefully placed disguises and barriers had slipped and her troubles, real or imagined were left exposed, captured for all to see and we, her unfeeling grandchildren, never even noticed. It felt like such a betrayal, like we, … like I, had let her down.
Soon after that I found myself hunting for other photographs; she loathed having her picture taken, invariably ripping up the ones she really hated, which was most of them, before we could protest, but a few sneaky shots survived and I scoured them all, scanning that beloved face for further proof of misery. And of course, I never found it, as I’d always known, deep down, I wouldn’t. What I did find was undisputable evidence of a woman who loved her family, a family that brought her happiness and gave her a sense of belonging in the world. She hated being alone and she never was in photographs, at least one of us was always with her and even though she was grimacing in every single shot, clearly uncomfortable with having a camera focused on her, she does so with a hint of a wry smile and a glimmer of that indulgent humour she never quite lost.
Hers was a complicated character and not always a nice one, our relationship was stormy at times and I suppose that’s why I don’t find it easy to write about her, she confused and puzzled me and I have never quite understood how I can love someone so fiercely having not always liked them very much. If what I have written seems conflicted at times, that’s why. She was the only person who has ever made me feel that way and it took the traumatic circumstances of her death and the time that has passed since to make me realise that I understand her a little more than I thought I did and a lot more than I thought I wanted to. I couldn’t let her go for a while because of the legacy of guilt and pain I’d been left by her passing, but now, having taken the time to try and make sense of so many things she said and did, I feel I know her a lot better and I don’t think she regretted the choices she made. I think she hated growing old and was afraid of dying and on that day, all those years ago, sitting in that grotty little photo booth, it all became too much for her, just for the space of a minute or so. But she didn’t always feel that way, before the photos were even developed and shot out of the slot she’d regained her composure, wiped her eyes and thought of a believable excuse for why they had to be taken again, and then she’d sat there dutifully smiling, a loving grandmother once more. It would almost have been like the moment never happened, except for that treacherous, tell-tale strip of pictures.
I could probably write several posts, and maybe I will, about my grandmother, about her doubts and fears and how they impacted on me and my family over the years. I don’t think she always liked herself very much, inside or out, but I have absolutely no doubt that she loved us and that is the knowledge that brings us both peace, that allowed me to finally let my grandmother go. I have put the strip of photographs away, somewhere hidden but safe, I get no pleasure from looking at them but I can’t bring myself to destroy them; as sad and regretful as they make me feel they speak of one of the many facets that made my grandmother who she was and, good and bad, I loved her.
She would always say that everything happens for a reason, and there must have been a reason why she kept those pictures to herself; personally, I think she wanted to be found and I did find her, eventually. Maybe a little later than I would have preferred, but maybe that way I found a tiny, lost piece of myself too so I’m grateful to her for that. She also used to say that everybody has their secrets; those photos were one of hers, and now they’re a secret we share. She is gone, forever beyond my reach and we are incapable of ever sharing anything again, except for this one thing that gives us a closeness we never quite managed to achieve when she was here.
