On death

Besides the coincidence of 1.4m visits on my sixth blogiversary, it is also the birthday of an old and dear friend, who I only met after my blogging started. And today the coincidences grew.

My paternal grandmother died at 7.30 this morning, after a long illness. My abiding memory of my grandmother is the best baking you can imagine. As a child I would visit her home and delight in her apple and rhubarb tarts (always tonnes of sugar on top), she would always treat me to potato bread with eggs, the best boxty I’ve ever tasted, and home made jam that was right from the back garden.

She was a deeply Catholic woman, who had 14 children in her lifetime. This means I have a heck of a lot of cousins.

I will always be proud that I was one of the first relatives (along with my uncle and brother) to visit her uncle’s grave in the Somme. Despite him having been buried there after the First World War, we were the first to venture there and visit the grave in 2000. She was very pleased with that indeed.

As long time readers will know, I rarely talk about personal things on my blog, it was a decision I made right at the start. And it is a decision I usually stick to. Maybe some find it cold to put the two together, but normally I would not have posted the news at all, were it not for the significance of the date.

I guess death makes you think a little more about life. I appreciate the times I spent with my grandmother, and I don’t believe I will ever see her again. When you die, you die. And memory is a powerful tool when you apply it, that seems like the best way to an afterlife – live in people’s memory.