Me and my gran circa 1955.
GRAN.
Like those others whose grans
were growing old when they were
growing boys, I remember you
for your apple pies and golden pancakes, syrup-laden —
my elder brother often being sent
to bring me home from your bungalow
long after my own tea had grown cold.
That was the time when granddad sat
in the high-backed wooden chair
my mother set fire to when he died —
the sort of chair that claims
a fortune in antique shops today — but
my small, frail gran, I remember you much more
than that gaunt, great man who only sat.
You lived later in our council-house front room,
too weak to climb upstairs, too unsafe
to be left with your diabetes —
twice daily my mother tested your water —
and so that we could take a holiday
my sister and her husband came to stay
while I went with Mum and Dad
to a rented van at Thornwick Bay.
Tomorrow would be Thursday and I'd been promised
a trip on the
Yorkshire Belle from Bridlington,
but Wednesday night we learnt that you had died.
That means I won't be able to go on the boat tomorrow!
the first reaction of a saddened twelve-year-old.
Dad attempted logically to explain, but all
unnecessarily — I knew that you deserved the sacrifice.
Twenty years on and I've finally made the trip
round Flamborough Head, past Thornwick Bay,
and back to Bridlington — with my own son
and
his gran — his Mum's Mum like you.
Gran! — I never begrudged you dying on that day.
The waves remind me always of you, gran, because
the trip was well worth the waiting for!
© Gerald England
Composed: Ashton under Lyne, 2nd February 1983
Publications
1996
Green's Magazine (Canada)
1998
LIMBO TIME (Hyde, New Hope International)
2007
Ackworth born, gone West (Internet)
