annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Memories

First day of British Summer Time, yay. The clock in my car is right again. My Sunday yoga class started and ended in natural light. Ah, it just feels like a person can expand and breathe a bit more easily, with more daylight. Though the temperature plummeted today. I'm doing that blanket using the temperature at noon every day. Yesterday was 13C and today was 8C. We still went swimming, me and the girl. 
I've been copying up some bits about Sam to read at our next Grief Warriors meeting. We're going to do some indoors, with photos and more time for each of us. Here's a few.

Can I Kick It?

It was around 2010, Grandson was about eleven but still tiny, Sam’s MS was hindering her movements but she was still pretty good. A winter half term, I went up to visit and found they’d been stuck inside all day. Grandson was bouncing off the walls. “I wish I could play football, Granny.” Right, you can, you will. There was a decent patch of grass on the mobile home park, next to the office with a good solid wall. We decided Sam would have to be the goalie as she had limited movement, so we propped her up against the wall and put down jumpers for goalposts.
It was really good fun and quite exhilarating. Grandson was the only child living on the park then, so it was deadly silent and our cries rang out across the Hertfordshire countryside. I was wearing an ankle length stretchy straight skirt and Uggs, not ideal footie kit but I managed and really got into it. I discovered I could dribble the ball – something I’d never once tried before – and Grandson and I drifted into a mad conversation about me getting signed to Arsenal and scoring the winning goal in the cup at Wembley – the first granny in all of history. Sammie was laughing so much her cheeks were pink, Grandson and I chased each other round, kicking the ball at the wall and scoring goals in some weird, convoluted system he came up with so we could both pass as well as tackle.
I felt I could have been a contender, or at least a PE teacher. When Gavin came home from work he was quite cross that we’d made exhibitions of ourselves in front of the neighbours but for once, instead of apologizing, Sammie rolled her eyes.

What I like about this one, as well as just the memory of a good time, is realising how resourceful I am, and that Grandson has that as well. 

The Pink Dress
When Sammie was about six or seven we found the rattiest, scruffiest, oldest dress you ever did see, at a jumble sale. It was made of pink net, with white lacy trims, but it was torn and stained, the grey lace hanging off one sleeve.
To Sam tho, it was a princess dress, back in the early 80s before princess dresses were two a penny. “Oh Mum, please can I have it? Pleeease. I won’t ask for anything else, I promise, pleeease.” Of course. How much for this? 5p – the old lady behind the table had fondly watched Sam’s enthusiasm and for once didn’t use that as an excuse to jack the price up.
It smelt horrible, like all jumble sale clothes, so we soaked it in a bucket of soapy water and hung it on the line for the rain to rinse but it was still dull, with grey lace and loads of stains.
No matter. I tried to mend the tears but made some of them worse and ended up trimming bits off with the pinking shears.
Sam was in seventh heaven when she finally got to wear the dress – miles too big, with her vest showing beneath. She just knew everyone else was jealous – completely blind to their appalled bewildered faces.

I love that she was always herself, knew what she liked, often oblivious to other people's opinions so never bothered by them. That had sad aspects as well, of course, but that fucking awful pink dress has become legendary in our little family.

Listening
I remember us together, I think of it every day. Her sat in the chair, giving me cheery eye contact, still up for anything. “Come on, let’s go and eavesdrop on people in the Guildbourne Centre,” I’d say on days when there was no petrol in the van, no ideas in my head. I’d push her through the crowds – her care home was just off the main drag in Worthing, so that was the route, down Montague Street, stopping to chat to the guitar-playing rough sleeper, who moved from outside Superdrug, right down to the Co-op, or by Laura Ashley in winter, under the metal arches and high glass roof of the arcade.
We found a bench in the Guildbourne Centre and waited. It smelled horrible in there, stale food, old clothes, slightly off meat. But someone would always sit next to us.
“I said to her, you can’t keep bringing him home, sooner or later Geoff will find out and then what? But she don’t care.”
Sam and I exchange a look. This is what we came for – born nosy, both of us.
“I said to her, you have to tell him you bought a dog?”
A dog? We were hoping for a secret boyfriend if not an actual child.
“I know he said you couldn’t, but you did, didn’t you, I said, and you can’t carry on like this, Geoff’s bound to go in the shed in the winter, to get his fishing gear.”

We both loved doing this. She couldn't speak but she could listen and knew what she was hearing for longer than we realised. In the week before she died the woman who came and gave massages told me the radio had been on while she was with Sam, and Dancing in the Dark came on. "Oh, I've always loved Bruce Forsyth," she said, and Sammie snorted at the wrong Bruce.

11:40 p.m. - 26.03.23

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

previous - next