AUDIO: Every scrap of you would be taken from me

A reading of the poem I wrote about my grandma (warning: I cry in this one!)

“I sometimes feel I’m not allowed to miss you.” I feel this line, in this poem I wrote, really sums up my last letter which looks into why we feel such shame when it comes to grieving our grandparents (or the elderly, loving presences in our lives.)

I’ve had so many messages from people saying that they felt the same, and it has really summed up why I do this newsletter - it’s to constantly try and get us to be more open and honest (if we feel we can, as voicing things is so tough) as it’s incredible how many others feel the same. It’s become such a cliche these days, but we really are never alone.

The poem I read is one I wrote trying to process my grandma’s death and what comes after it. It’s the one that I find the hardest to read without crying, I’ve read it at a few events and I get choked up every time. This above reading is no exception.

Thanks as always for your support, and please do keep letting me know what you think/what you’d like me to write about. Or if you’d like to write something (or even interview you if you don’t feel about to write) I want as many people as possible to be able to feel they can share their grief, to help open up the conversation.

Memories of you float by
As translucent as the skin on your hands
The pink moon of your nails, Anais Anais powdery on my nose
The cheerful chime of the Countdown clock
You had a tin full of jewelled buttons and, and...

I sometimes feel I'm not allowed to miss you

You aged, like everyone is supposed to
Bones crumbling under flesh
Nature has it that, we all lose someone like you 

All your porcelain birds and dogs
They live with me now
Coated in the dust of my chaos
Which brings me here, to the part I don't want to get to...

But it's coming. It has to
I lost your ring, the one granddad scrimped and saved for
Those six diamonds "will you be my wife"
They took it off your decaying finger and placed it on mine

Understand afterwards, the fog descended so thickly I couldn't see
I lay on cubicle floors, retching up my grief
But does that mean anything to you?
That I feel the ghost of that gold band each day, that I look for it
In every pawn shop window?

Or am I making this all about me, again? 

You used to write
"Thinking of you often"
At the bottom of the letters that I'd read in a rush
I'd slot you, in your chair 
Around 50p long vodkas, teenage tongues in liquid smoke
Shallow needs seem to often come first

The warning was right there
In that navy blue clock hand
The seconds pass by too quickly
And the right words are often hard to find

All I can hope now is that the heaven you were promised 
It opened its gates
And that, despite it all
Somehow
I'm still your golden girl

Thinking of you often,

Katie